Art and Letters

I have always found it interesting that what Canadian artists write can be as remarkable as — sometimes even more memorable than — what they paint, draw, or sculpt. There are, of course, exceptions. Tom Thomson was apparently not much of a letter writer, but he was a spectacularly inspiring painter. Thankfully, his peers wrote to one another about him, and much of this correspondence was kept. Of course, his artistic output has been generously reviewed and analyzed in the years since he died. The Group of Seven painter Frederick Varley, on the other hand, wrote heart-stopping letters home to his wife during the First World War. These add much to our appreciation of his impressive war art and the times he lived through. You really can’t beat his kind of writing when it comes to describing conflict:

You in Canada with all your reading of war. Those in America and England cannot realise at all...