O-694

•

painting (portrait)

•

The Honourable Archibald McLean

Portrait of Speaker Archibald McLean

Archibald McLean was born in 1791 in what is now South Stormont, Ontario. His distinguished military career saw him seriously wounded at the Battle of Queenston Heights during the War of 1812. He had two terms as Speaker, then became a respected judge. He once argued for the discharge of fugitive slave John Anderson because he couldn’t support a law that would “convert into chattels a very large number of the human race.” His portrait was painted by Théophile Hamel in 1854, and he was given a well-attended public funeral upon his death in 1865.

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.