O-452.1

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painting (portrait)

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The Honourable Sir Henry Smith

Portrait of Speaker Sir Henry Smith

Sir Henry Smith was born in 1812 in London, England. His family moved to Kingston, Ontario, where his father was the first warden of the penitentiary. Smith studied law and in 1841 was elected to the Assembly for Frontenac, where he served for 20 years as a confidante of John A. Macdonald. He was an unpopular choice as Speaker, and eventually fell out with Macdonald. Smith, the former Conservative, ran for re-election twice as a Reformer and lost. He was elected, as a Conservative again, to the Ontario legislature in 1867, and died a year later. William Sawyer completed his portrait in 1869.

William Sawyer

William Sawyer was born in Montreal in 1820, and as a young man he considered law but chose to be an artist. By the 1840s had was established doing portraits of Montreal’s eminent citizens, though he also took his paint and brushes on the road as far as Toronto and picked up portrait commissions along the way. He settled in Kingston in 1855 but maintained a painting and photographic studio in Montreal. In 1863 he was renowned enough to be selected to make a portrait of John A. Macdonald, Several of his paintings are in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.