Harold Town (1924–1990)

According to the flyleaf this is the most extensive collection of the artists works, published on the occasion of the centenary of Thomson's birth. Through eight chapters the accessible and very readable text by art historian David P Silcox provides a critical commentary along with biographical details. The book includes a separate chronology, bibliography and an index of illustrations.

The book is very well illustrated with 177 paintings shown in full colour, many of them to the same dimensions as the original. The pictures run with the text so they are close to where they are discussed. The captions to the pictures provide only the title, the full captions are listed separately at the back of the book. In addition there are nearly 60 black and white images including paintings and period photographs.

This is a substantial book, large in size and landscape in format, and printed on heavy stock. However there are some shortcomings, mainly due to the quality of the printing; the black and white half-tones are soft and very dense, and lack detail in the dark areas, and while the colour plate are much crisper they too suffer from a lack of detail in the dark areas, and they appear to have a cream cast to them (I have note been fortunate to see the originals and base this on a comparison with Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, which appears to be a much better produced book). These are common failings with some printing of the period (1977).

It is a shame that the quality of the printing is questionable here, for there is so much to be said for having so many paintings reproduced life size.… (meer)