In a thriller worthy of Tom Thomson himself—the famed Canadian painter who drowned at age 39 in uncommon circumstances which have fuelled wide-ranging theories—one among his work has been returned to its proprietor 4 years after it vanished.
An unsigned and untitled Thomson portray of a lake in Algonquin Park, which he initially gifted to his good friend Charlie Scrim, was entrusted to Waddington’s Public sale Home in Toronto in 2015 by Joseph Murray, whose uncle had given it to him in 1977. His uncle, Paul Chandler, labored at Scrim’s Florist in Ottawa for many years and inherited the property of Charlie Scrim’s sister Flora, which included the portray. Chandler gave it to his nephew as a gift when he graduated from medical faculty on the College of Ottawa.
The 8in by 10in oil-on-wood panel portray from round 1915 had hung within the Murray household residence for over 30 years when Murray, who had since moved to Hawaii, determined to promote it. In 2013 it was despatched to the Canadian Conservation Institute on the Nationwide Gallery of Canada for evaluation and authentication, the place it was attributed to Thomson. The attribution was partly due to verification that the portray contained a pigment referred to as Freeman’s white, which was solely utilized by Thomson and the Group of Seven painters with whom he was carefully related. Its authenticity, Murray tells The Artwork Newspaper from his residence on Kauai, was additionally confirmed by the late Thomson skilled, artwork scholar and curator Dennis Reid.
After having the portray restored and appraised, it was picked up by an worker of Waddington’s Auctioneers. Despite assurances that it was both in storage or awaiting public sale, Murray was knowledgeable in 2021 that the public sale home didn’t have it. When Murray requested after Stephen Ranger, the worker he had entrusted it to and with whom he says he had exchanged many emails, he was instructed he not labored there. Murray says he employed personal investigators to search out Ranger, who insisted the portray was on the public sale home.
In 2022, Murray filed an C$11m ($8m) lawsuit towards Waddington’s. The public sale home, he says, insisted that the portray was by no means in its possession and concurrently that it was not an unique Thomson.
After a number of years of litigation, Murray realized on 22 April, by way of his lawyer Steven Bookman, that the portray had been discovered. Waddington’s didn’t reply to The Artwork Newspaper’s requests for remark; all Bookman was instructed was that the portray had been present in a climate-controlled storage unit.
Though Murray says he welcomed the information of the portray’s restoration, saying “it was like being reunited with a member of the family”, the query of the place the portray was for the previous decade stays unanswered and the lawsuit is ongoing.
“Dr Murray has misplaced the use and pleasure of his portray for the final ten years,” Bookman, Murray’s lawyer, mentioned in a press release. “Dr Murray has additionally misplaced the advantage of the funds that he would have acquired if his portray had been marketed for him in 2015. Whereas Dr Murray is grateful that his portray has been positioned in any case this time, there are nonetheless areas that we are going to be pursuing for damages”
For now, the portray sits in storage whereas Murray as soon as once more seems to be for a purchaser. He says the work “captures the essence of Ontario wilderness” and hopes its subsequent ownrs appreciates its “unimaginable spectrum of color”.
