O-2185.1

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painting (portrait)

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The Honourable Joseph-Rémi Vallières de St. Réal

Portrait of Speaker Joseph-Rémi Vallières

Joseph-Rémi Vallières was born 1787. After growing up in Quebec he became a lawyer and amassed a fortune in property and stock. He was a moderate Quebec voice within the nationalist Canadian party, though his opponents accused him of being fickle on nationalism.

He had a tempestuous rivalry with party leader Louis-Joseph Papineau.

Eventually he tired of fighting with his rival, and in 1829 he applied for a judgeship in Trois Riveieres. In 1842 he was appointed chief justice of the Court of King’s Bench in Montreal, and died there in1847. His portrait was painted by Théophile Hamel in 1854.

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.