Tom Thomson’s Islands, Canoe Lake, 1916: a rock as the head of a bear

Abstract

Abstract Tom Thomson is a doyen of Canadian art. Here, I argue one of his well-known pictures contains a hidden figure. In Thomson’s Islands, Canoe Lake, 1916, a blue-gray picture primitive richly affords a rock and a bear, a long-overlooked ambiguity, one that Thomson did not tell us he intended. Its picture primitives are contours and patches. They offer a limited set of scene primitives. A likelihood ratio of less than 1 in 100 supports the contention that the bear is a hidden figure.