O-443

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painting (portrait)

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The Honourable George Black

Portrait of Speaker George Black

George Black was born in 1873 in New Brunswick, but became a character of the Yukon. As prospector, he found and lost a fortune in gold, hunted moose and grizzly bears and, once he set his sights on politics, campaigned through his riding by canoe and dog team. He was elected to Parliament in 1921 and made Speaker in 1930. In 1935, the year after Kenneth Forbes painted his portrait, he had a nervous breakdown and left to receive treatment. His wife, the storied Martha Black, ran in his seat and became the second woman elected to Parliament. He returned to win back his seat. He died in 1965.

Kenneth Forbes

Kenneth Forbes was born in Toronto in 1892, and first studied art with his father, the portraitist John Colin Forbes. He also studied in England and Scotland, until he joined a British machine-gun corps to fight in the First World War. He was gassed and wounded, and twice mentioned in dispatches for gallantry. In 1917 he became a Canadian war artist, and his gripping painting Canadian Artillery in Action is on permanent display at the Canadian War Museum. Forbes was an outspoken foe of modern art and helped to establish the traditionally minded Ontario Institute of Painters.