O-441

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painting (portrait)

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The Honourable Edgar Nelson Rhodes

Portrait of Speaker Edgar Nelson Rhodes

Edgar Nelson Rhodes was presiding over the Commons as deputy Speaker on the night in 1916 when fire broke out and destroyed the Centre Block, killing seven people. The Amherst, Nova Scotia lawyer, first elected to Parliament in 1908, was elevated to Speaker in 1917. He left federal politics in 1921, and in 1925 became premier of Nova Scotia on a platform that vowed to temper federal influence. Yet he later returned to federal politics, and was finance minister during the Great Depression. He was later appointed to Senate, and died in 1942. His portrait was painted by Sir Edmund Wyly Grier in 1921.

Sir Edmund Wyly Grier

Sir Edmund Wyly Grier was born in Melbourne in 1862 and his family moved to Toronto when he was a teen. He studied art in London, Paris and Rome, then opened a studio in Toronto and did brisk business doing portraits of eminent Torontonians. In 1933 he led a boycott of the National Gallery of Canada by artists who alleged the gallery overly favoured modern artists, though today his own art hangs in the gallery. He was president of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art, and in 1937 became the first Canadian artist to be knighted for his work.