1950s Stompin’ Tom Connors sketch generates artistic buzz
FREDERICTON—Decked out in his trademark Stetson and plywood-pounding cowboy boots, it’s hard to imagine countryfolk legend Stompin’ Tom Connors as a male model.
And yet, a recently acquired artist’s drawing from the 1950s — obtained by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton — offers a revealing glimpse of the troubadour as a lanky, square-jawed teen wearing nothing but tight athletic shorts and high-topped sneakers.
The drawing was among a collection of artworks by New Brunswick artist Fred Ross, recently donated to the gallery.
A student of Ross’s work, John Leroux, the gallery’s manager of collections and exhibitions, recognized the drawing as a preparatory sketch for a mural that Ross would paint inside the former Saint John Vocational School in the 1950s, when Connors was a student there.
“I double-checked with some photographs and, yes, this was Stompin’ Tom,” Leroux said, adding that Connors, who died in 2013, wrote about posing for Ross in his 1995 autobiography, “Before the Fame.” In his book, Connors noted that the painted figures’ faces “had all been mercifully modified to give each character a semblance of good looks.”
Born in Saint John, N.B., on Feb. 9, 1936, to an unwed teenage mother, Connors’ early life was marked by poverty. He recalled hitchhiking with his mother and begging on the streets before he was placed in the care of Children’s Aid at the age of eight. He was adopted a year later by a family in Skinner’s Pond, P.E.I., but ran away four years later.
He posed for the mural when he was about 15 or 16 years old, Leroux said.