Ship Models (The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario)

Spanning some 350 years, the Thomson Collection of historic ship models contains examples of exquisite workmanship and some of the masterpieces of the genre. Pride of the collection are the rare British dockyard models made to scale for affluent 18th-century clients closely associated with the Navy. A large number of models―made from wood and bone, with rigging of human hair―were made by some of the 120,000 French and other prisoners of the Napoleonic Wars. "In 2002 Ken Thomson (1923-2006) announced his gift of some 2,000 Canadian and European paintings and works of art to the Art Gallery of Ontario. The holdings in the Thomson Collection date from late seventeeth to the mid twentieth century and represent a diversity of model style and ship type ranging from tugs, dredgers and trawlers to cargo vessels, passenger steamers, private yachts, corvettes, battleships, cruisers, torpedo boats, destroyers and two aircraft carriers."--Jacket