Portrait of Prime Minister R.B. Bennett
R.B. Bennett was born into a poor family in Hopewell, New Brunswick in 1870, went to law school and built a law firm in Calgary, Alberta that made him one of the richest Canadians of his time. He lived in hotels, and never married. Many saw him as indifferent to the suffering of the Great Depression, though he was a generous philanthropist with his own fortune. He left a mark on Canada by establishing the Bank of Canada and the CBC.
Kenneth Forbes painted the portrait posthumously, and posed Bennett diligently at work, bearing a stern, even cold expression.