Little-known Tom Thomson painting set for auction

A small, little-known oil painting by Canadian art icon Tom Thomson will be among the artworks to cross the block during the 2011spring auction season.

Early Snow, Algonquin Park is an oil canvas, mounted on board, that is signed by Thomson. Just smaller than a letter-size sheet of paper, it depicts a forest scene of narrow trees, with the snow painted in blues and pinks.

It is estimated it will sell for between $450,000 and $650,000.

"The technique is fantastic," Sotheby's Canada president David Silcox told CBC News on Wednesday, adding that Thomson likely completed the work around 1914.

According to Silcox, an art historian who has published books on Thomson and the Group of Seven, the work isn't a widely known piece. The painting's original owner is unknown and it may have been given to someone as a gift, he said.

The work was later acquired by noted Toronto art dealer G. Blair Laing. An American collector purchased it from Laing in 1958 and passed it down to its current owner. After reading Silcox's writing about Thomson, the work's Pittsburgh-based owner contacted him about the painting.

Early Snow, Algonquin Park was included in a small exhibition in San Diego in 1972, but never beforeexhibited in Canada.

The painting will be offered as part of Sotheby's Canada's sale of Canadian post-war and contemporary art in Toronto on May 26.