It all started with a giant canvas print.

Mary Ann Lucas, a friend of Onset summer resident and artist Josephine Thoms, spotted it at a local recycling center and scooped it up.

A whopping 4 feet by 5 feet, the canvas was a print of a landscape and small boats. Lucas, a fellow artist who used to paint with Thoms, knew her friend would be able to find something to do with it.

Lucas' son, Bobby, delivered it to Thoms' Prospect Avenue home… and put it under a bed.

"My grandchildren were coming, and there's a zillion of them, and where else would it be safe?!" Thoms asked, rhetorically.

Thoms, who will be 91 next month, operates the Mount Hope Cottage Studio and Gallery out of her home. A lifelong painter and former illustrator for the state of Maryland, where she resides in the winter months, Thoms show her works and sells paintings, portraits, notecards, and other art while she is in town for the summer.

But even Thoms, an avid recycler, wasn't quite sure what to do with the mammoth canvas.

"What are you going to do with a painting that big?" she asks. "I can't sell that out of my living room!"

Constance Cook, a neighbor and friend, had an idea.

Cook, who worked at Wareham High School during a summer program, had invited Claire Smith in to chat with her class about two very important anniversaries for the Town of Wareham coming up next summer: The 275th anniversary of the incorporation of the town and the 200th anniversary of the British attack on Wareham by the HMS Nimrod warship.

Smith, who also serves as town moderator, has been working with a committee to plan the 2014 Summer of Celebration to commemorate the events.

Thoms could use that canvas to depict the Nimrod attack, and give it to the town to display during the Summer of Celebration, Cook noted.

Thoms was on board and began researching the 1814 attack. She went to the Wareham Free Library, where employee Patty Neal helped her find old photos of a reenactment of the attack.

With photocopies of the reenactments, Thoms pieced together a scene that she used as her guide for the painting. Later, friends stopped by with historical books and other pieces of information that helped her. Thoms noted: There's a lot of conflicting information about how the attack went down.

With historical information and the photos as her guide, Thoms, who is very proud to have purchased all of the paint for the project locally at Onset Village Hardware, then began readying the canvas.

First, she painted the entire thing with a white matte paint. Then, she went over it with a burnt sienna color to warm it up.

It was a challenge, she said, to determine what colors she should use — after all, she was working from black-and-white copies.

Thoms notes that she wanted the painting to tell the entire story of the attack — so it's not geographically accurate.

Nonetheless, the result is breathtaking.

The Nimrod is shown in the background, with soldiers rowing boats from the ship to the land in the area that is now the Narrows.

There are burning boats in the foreground. British soldiers stand on the shore, and behind them is the burning cotton factory and Tremont Nail Factory getting hit by a cannonball.

"It tells the story in children's terms," Thoms explained, noting that she hopes children will be able to better understand the attack through her painting.

The project took four weeks to complete.

"It was a group thing," Thoms says of the process, thanking all who helped her in figuring out both what to do with the giant canvas and later, helped her work through the historical events.

Smith, of the Summer of Celebration committee, said she is thrilled with the painting.

"To think that this person could come up with something like this and have a willingness to put in all that work and effort and donate it to the community is wonderful," she said. "It's exciting … to have something that will go forward in the longterm, for the history of the town."

Want to see more of Thoms' work? Visit Mount Hope Cottage, 7 Prospect Ave., Onset, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. For more information, call 508-295-4601.