O-645

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painting (portrait)

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The Right Honourable Lester Bowles Pearson

Portrait of Prime Minister Lester Pearson

Canada changed under Lester Pearson, who brought in the the Canada Pension Plan, student loans, universal health care, a unified armed forces and the Maple Leaf flag. Pearson, who was born in north Toronto in 1897, is widely remembered as co-founder, with United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, of the U.N.’s peacekeeping force during the Suez crises, which won Pearson the Nobel Peace Prize. His official portrait broke new ground, as artist Hugh Mackenzie dispensed with the oil-on-canvas of all prior examples in favour of egg tempera on masonite, with a softer result that suited Pearson’s amiable, diplomatic charm.

Hugh Mackenzie

Toronto-born Hugh Mackenzie lived to age 93. His long career spanned subject matter and media of all kinds, and traced a relentless trajectory from realism to late-life abstraction. He studied at Mount Allison University under Alex Colville and Lawren Harris, and later was working as an illustrator for Avro Aircraft Corporation when the Arrow fighter jet program was controversially cancelled. He taught for many years at the Ontario College of Art and Design, and in his 2021 obituary a female colleague said he had been “one of the few male teachers back in the day who treated women as equals.”