O-2104

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painting (portrait)

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Frederick Temple Blackwood, the Earl of Dufferin and Ava

John Colin Forbes

The Forbes family arches over Canada’s early official portraiture like no other. Between John Colin Forbes and son Kenneth Forbes, they painted seven Prime Ministers and 25 speakers of the Senate or House of Commons. They also painted several British monarchs, most notably John Colin Forbes’s portraits of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, which were destroyed in the fire at Parliament in 1916. Forbes was born in Toronto in 1846, and studied in London and Paris. He was friends with Wilfrid Laurier and painted more than one portrait of the MP and Prime Minister, including one that Laurier donated to the nascent National Gallery of Canada.