O-447

•

painting (portrait)

•

The Honourable Alan Aylesworth Macnaughton

Portrait of Speaker Alan Macnaughton

As Speaker, Alan Macnaughton presided over a famously impassioned debate. The lawyer, who had been born in Napanee and elected to Parliament for the riding of Mount Royal in Montreal, had been an MP for 14 years when elected Speaker in 1963. Soon began the fractious debate over a new Canadian flag, but Macnaughton managed to rein in much of the acrimony. He did not stand for re-election in 1965, and his Mount Royal riding was won by another young lawyer, Pierre Trudeau. Macnaughton was soon appointed to the Senate. He died in 1999. His portrait was painted c. 1964 by Lilias Torrance Newton.

Lilias Torrance Newton

Lilias Torrance Newton, born in 1896 in Lachine, Quebec, was a founding member of both the influential Beaver Hall Group and Canadian Group of Painters. She studied in Montreal, Paris and London, and served with the Red Cross in England during the First World War. She established a studio in Montreal and became one of Canada’s most important artists, with approximately 300 portraits that “conveyed sympathy for her subjects and an understanding of character” says the National Gallery of Canada. Her work, influenced by impressionism, stands out among the traditional realism of official Parliamentary portraiture. She died in 1980.