O-429

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painting (portrait)

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The Honourable Austin (Augustin) Cuvillier

Portrait of Speaker Augustin Cuvillier

Augustin Cuvillier, who later anglicized his name to Austin, was born in 1779 in Quebec. He became a businessman with cyclical financial gains and losses. He was elected first to the Assembly of Lower Canada, where he argued that members should be paid so more people could afford to stand for election. He was later elected to the Assembly of the Province of Canada and seen as a compromise candidate for Speaker. He left politics in 1834, after years of fighting between reform and nationalism, to focus on his business. Théophile Hamel painted his portrait in 1856, and he died in Montreal in 1849.

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.