O-459

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painting (portrait)

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The Honourable James Langstaff Bowman

Portrait of Speaker James Bowman

James Bowman was a lawyer in Manitoba, and had been on the Canadian men’s curling team at the 1932 Olympics. In 1935 he was in his first term as MP when he became the first Manitoban elected as Speaker. He oversaw contentious debates about social policy and programs during the hardship of the Great Depression. He was praised by all parties in the House for his fair and level-headed performance, if at times his lack of experience showed. He’d been Speaker for only 13 months when an election was called and he lost his seat. He returned to law and died in 1951. Kenneth Forbes painted his portrait c. 1935.

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.