Catalogue entry

Mr. Van Clieaf was a guide in Algonquin Park from 1906 to 1914. He was a friend of Tom Thomson and at times, they camped and guided together (among others Van Clieaf and Thomson jointly guided a member of the Haney family and an elderly Mr. Westwood of the firm of Allcock, Leight and Westwood, Toronto). The painting was a gift from the artist to Mr. Van Clieaf, since it contains buttercups, or so Mr. Van Clieaf believed. (Buttercups, however, bloom in July and are not the type of plant that would dry out and survive a winter to appear the following March.) The buttercup was of special interest to Mr. Van Clieaf since he had asked Thomson to paint a design on the bow of his Lakefield canoe. Thomson plucked a buttercup and asked if this would be pleasing. When Mr. Van Clieaf agreed, he painted the design on the canoe. Afterwards, the canoe was known as “The Buttercup” (W.E. Preston to the Art Gallery of Toronto, letter of 13 March 1957, on file in the correspondence files).

Mr. Van Clieaf also recalled that the locale of the painting was Hayhurst Point, Canoe Lake, across from Mowat Lodge (letter of 4 February 1957). He said that the birches to the extreme left of the painting are on the site of the memorial cairn erected to Tom Thomson (letter of 21 February 1957).