Stephen Harper's official portrait to be unveiled 20 years after he led Conservatives to victory
In the House of Commons Foyer in the West Block of Canada’s Parliament hang 21 portraits . They are 21 of the 24 Canadians who have held the office of prime minister since the country began.
The collection grows slowly; the last addition was Paul Martin in 2015. And there are three portraits that have not yet joined the ranks — those of the last three prime ministers, including the current one.
That will change on Feb. 3 with the unveiling of an official portrait of Stephen Harper. He is to date the only prime minister to have come from the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada, which he co-founded in 2004 with fellow politician Peter MacKay, the final leader of the Progressive Conservative Party.
MacKay would go on to serve as deputy leader of the new party, and as minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Foreign Affairs, National Defence, and Justice. And Harper, as leader, took the newly created Conservatives to victory in three successive elections, in 2006, 2008 and 2011.
The unveiling will take place at a gala event on Parliament Hill, a gathering that will also mark the 20th anniversary of the first election of the Harper Conservatives and the start of almost a decade in power.
Another event celebrating the milestone will take place at Ottawa’s Rogers Centre the following night. (Harper was sworn in on Feb. 6, 2006, after the election of Jan. 23.)
“Next week’s events are a timely reminder that Canadian sovereignty is upheld through an enduring Parliament, strong institutions and the peaceful, orderly transfer of power,” said Anna Tomala, a spokesperson for Harper, in a message to National Post. “The 20th anniversary of the Harper government honours the wider team, those who shoulder the daily work of governing and steward the public trust. Mr. Harper’s portrait unveiling, the Harper government 20th anniversary gala, and the surrounding events aim to celebrate Canada, strengthen our resolve and the enduring values that unite us.”
The portrait itself took almost a year and close collaboration between painter and subject. The former is Phil Richards, a famed Canadian artist, who got a call in late 2021 from Johanna Mizgala, chief curator of the House of Commons.
“They wanted to know if I’d be interested in doing a project, and that project was the painting of the official prime ministerial portrait of Stephen Harper,” Richards tells National Post.
His answer: a resounding yes.
So in early 2022, Harper invited Richards to his home in Calgary, where he lives with his wife, Laureen, and runs Harper & Associates, a global consulting firm.
“I stayed with him for a few days,” Richards says. “And all our initial research was done there.”
He came away with fond memories of his subject. “One thing I will say about him is that he’s probably one of the most engaged sitters I’ve ever worked with.”
“He was really personable, and he’s funny, and he’s an excellent writer.” Richards read two of Harper’s three books — Right Here, Right Now, about politics and leadership, and A Great Game, about the early years of professional hockey in Toronto. (Richards won’t say much about the painting until the unveiling, but he let slip that there’s a tiny Stanley Cup in it somewhere.)
For Richards, who attended the Ontario College of Art in his hometown of Toronto, painting Harper was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.
“From the very beginning of my career, there were two really prized commissions that I kept thinking about,” he says. “One was a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, and the other was a portrait of a Canadian prime minister .”
Richards not only painted a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II , on the occasion of her diamond jubilee in 2012, but he first met Harper at its unveiling. “That was June 6, 2012, in Buckingham Palace,” he recalls.
Richards says it’s important that he work closely with his subject. “I consider the process a collaborative one,” he says. “I think of the artist and the sitter working together to come up with an image that is more insightful than anything I could come up with on my own.”
It begins with an in-depth interview. “And then I’ll take some casual photos, different poses and different backgrounds and settings.”
Charcoal sketches come next, then concept sketches, which are usually pencil on paper. Next, a series of maquettes, in greyscale or colour. Then “what I call a final maquette, which is about a half-size version of what the final painting is going to be.”
“But each of these stages I take, I go back to the sitter and get an approval.” With Harper’s portrait, he began with about a dozen poses, which they winnowed down to a few and then one.
“So by the time I get to do the final painting, there’s just no surprises whatsoever,” he says. The work was finished in late 2023 but is only now being unveiled, a gap he says is not unheard of in politics.
“When the painting was done, (Harper) and a couple of his colleagues came out to the studio to see the finished product, which I always like, to get the sitters out to see the final painting when it’s finished, before getting it framed and all that. You know, JPEGs are good, but it’s not quite the same as seeing the real painting.” The painting’s size, about 90 centimetres wide and 150 cm tall, is also more imposing than seeing it on a screen.
While the details of Harper’s portrait will remain a mystery until its unveiling, a look at Richards’ other commissioned works gives one a sense of what to expect. He tends to include a window in the background, with a view of something important outside.
“I use it in a surrealistic way sometimes,” he says, “where I’ll have the sitter inside an office, say, and then out the window you’ll see the building in which that office is situated.” (His recent portrait of Peter Stoicheff , president and vice chancellor of the University of Saskatchewan, is one such work.)
“In the future, if someone wants to take the time and figure out why all these things are in there, they can put it together,” he says. “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. You can put it together and you can figure out what the relationship is of that figure to the environment, to the landscape in the background, and then there’ll be still-life elements in the foreground; they’re all significant as well.”
If you ever see his portrait of the Queen — currently in the Senate of Canada Building in Ottawa during renovations to the Centre Block — look closely. The papers on the desk are a copy of the British North America Act; the flowers are Queen Elizabeth Roses, introduced in 1954; and there are two Welsh Corgis carved into the backrest of the chair. (The artist’s signature can also be found on the chair’s side.)
Similarly, his 1998 portrait of Bob Rae , which hangs in the Legislative Building in Toronto, shows the former Ontario premier in a blue collar but also sitting in a captain’s chair, a symbol of power. When asked about the painting’s sunny background, Richards explains that Rae’s father once performed with his two siblings on Vaudeville in a group called The Three Raes of Sunshine.
Richards says politics plays a relatively minor role in a politician’s official portrait, in part because they are usually done with that after they’ve left office.
“When they’ve left office, people are able to stand back and look at their career, and even the politics of their career … and they realize that we’re all human.”
He likens it to hockey players, a metaphor of which Harper would no doubt approve. “We may have played for a certain team … but when you retire and you look back, you don’t hate all the players that played on the other teams. They’re your peers.”
Indeed, Harper was prime minister when the portrait of Jean Chrétien by Christian Martin Nicholson was unveiled, and he spoke at the event . After opening with a joke that “the hanging of Chrétien was long overdue,” he got serious.
“By hanging his portrait, we, political opponents and allies alike, honour his long and successful service to Canada, and do so here within the walls of the building where he laboured for so many years, and to such enduring effect,” he said . “For Mr. Chrétien was, and must always be remembered as, a great parliamentarian. He enjoyed the craft of politics, and he was undoubtedly one of its masters.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney is scheduled to be in attendance and to speak at the latest unveiling, which will be hosted by Francis Scarpaleggia, Speaker of the House of Commons and a Liberal MP in Quebec’s Lac-Saint-Louis riding since the time of Harper’s first government.
“The addition of a Prime Minister’s portrait is an important moment for Parliament’s historical record,” Scarpaleggia said in a statement to National Post. “It reinforces our collective pride in the longevity and stability of our nation’s democratic institutions.”
The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Richards turns 75 this year but remains active. Is there another prime ministerial portrait in his future, or maybe another monarch?
“Well, the painting with the Queen, that was an incredible experience,” he says. “And I don’t think there’ll ever be a monarch like her, ever again.”
But he adds: “I’d like to do King Charles. I’d like to do another prime minister. I haven’t done a governor general yet, but maybe one day. I just have to live long enough. I’ll keep on plugging away.”
He notes that “portraiture has fallen on hard times in the 20th and the 21st centuries, but I always believed in it.”
A small example? The Mona Lisa, by Leonardo Da Vinci.
“That’s a commissioned portrait, but it just happens to be of such high quality that it transcends its times and the specificity of the sitter’s life, and becomes a kind of icon of feminine beauty that is very difficult to match. It’s the intensity with which Leonardo worked, and the resolution of the painting itself that makes it live on.”
“And that’s what I always aim for in my portraits. So I’m always thinking about posterity and future generations to look back and say: Hey, that’s not a bad painting. I wonder who did it? And I wonder who’s sitting there?”
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