O-688

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painting (portrait)

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The Honourable Jean-Antoine Panet

Portrait of Speaker Jean-Antoine Panet

Jean-Antoine Panet was the first, and third, Speaker of the House of Assembly of the Province of Lower Canada, which existed from 1791 to 1838. Panet served as Speaker from 1792 to 1794, and from 1797 to 1815, when he died in office.

He was born in the town of Quebec in New France in 1751, and became a man of considerable wealth, prestige and influence. He was a lawyer and judge, and during the American Revolution he was a militia officer and a leader in the defence of Quebec.

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.