O-1526.1

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painting (portrait)

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The Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau

Portrait of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau

Pierre Trudeau was the first Prime Minister born in the 20th century, and the Quebec lawyer was intelligent, charming, media-savvy and always polarizing. He so dominated political life for 20 years that “mania” was suffixed to his surname. He brought in official bilingualism and multiculturalism, and patriated the Constitution, thereby completing Canada’s sovereignty from Britain. He liberalized the Criminal Code, and weathered the October Crisis and a referendum on sovereignty in Quebec. In Myfanwy Spencer Pavelic’s official portrait, the first to use acrylic paint, Trudeau’s wardrobe and a sharply two-tone background portray a bold, confident man of contrasts.

Myfanwy Pavelic

Myfanwy Pavelic was born in Victoria in 1916 and spent most of her life there. When she accepted the commission for the official portrait of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau she insisted he come to her Victoria studio for sittings. She was largely self taught, though she had an early booster in Emily Carr, and spent some years in New York City observing artists and the art world. She was a pianist, and her portrait subjects included Glenn Gould, Mstislav Rostropovich and others. Her 1983 portrait of Yehudi Menuhin was accepted into the permanent collection of Britain’s National Portrait Gallery, a first for Canadian-born artists.