O-450

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painting (portrait)

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The Honourable John Sandfield Macdonald

Portrait of Speaker John Sandfield Macdonald

John Sandfield Macdonald was born in Glengarry, Ontario in 1812. He became a lawyer, and in 1841 was elected to the first Assembly of the Province of Canada, where he remained, promoting reform and responsible government, until Confederation in 1867. For two years he was joint premier of Canada. Over the years he had gradually moved to the pro-Confederation side of the debate, for which a grateful Prime Minister John A. Macdonald helped him to be elected the first premier of the new province of Ontario in 1867. His portrait was painted by Théophile Hamel in 1854, and he died in Cornwall in 1872.

Théophile Hamel

Théophile Hamel was born in 1817 in Sainte-Foy, Quebec, and studied art in Quebec and in many of the great cultural centres of Europe. He was an astute business man and a tremendously successful artist, and the National Gallery of Canada calls him “one of early Canada’s greatest portrait painters.” In 1853 the government of the United Canadas appointed him official portrait painter, and tasked him with creating portraits of all Speakers since 1791, many of which were copied from portraits held by families or elsewhere. His subjects also included the generals Montcalm and Wolfe, and many other eminent figures of early Canada.