The Jack Pine - Provenance and Exhibition

Provenance and Exhibition

The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa has held the work since shortly after its creation. During his wilderness travels, Thomson likely stored The Jack Pine in his shack behind the Studio Building. In late 1917, Dr. Norm MacCallum, Thomson's patron, put it and a few other works by Thomson on display at the Arts and Letters Club. Representatives of the National Gallery visited the club on two occasions in the spring of 1918. The museum wished to add to its existing collection of three works by Thomson. Director Eric Brown was appalled on his first visit at the poor lighting provided the paintings. For the second visit, May 2, the display had been improved, and the director and his associate chose The Jack Pine (along with Thomson's Autumn Garland and 25 sketches) for the National Gallery. Brown wrote to a colleague that The Jack Pine was "in our opinion, and that of Thomson's fellow painters, the best picture of any kind he ever painted."

Two months after The Jack Pine arrived in Ottawa in August 1918, it was sent to St. Louis, Missouri, as part of an exhibition of contemporary Canadian art. It circulated until 1919, and only in February 1920 was the painting first displayed in Canada, as part of a Thomson memorial exhibition. In the next five decades it would be displayed widely, in Europe (London, Paris, Ghent), and across Canada and the United States.

The Jack Pine was included in an exhibition of Thomson's work that travelled across Canada in 2003, organized by the National Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario. It was then shown at the Hermitage Museum in Russia in 2004.