TIME TO HANG ANOTHER PM
Martin portrait to be unveiled
Osgoode artist Paul Wyse enjoyed painting the official portrait of former prime minister Paul Martin so much, he did it twice.
OK, that’s not quite accurate. The 46-year-old Wyse, whose portrait of Martin will be unveiled Wednesday in the Centre Block of Parliament, painted the second portrait because he wasn’t fully content with his first effort.
“It didn’t feel quite right to me,” Wyse, sporting a bushy black beard, explained this week. “There was something I felt uncertain about. I didn’t know what it was.”
That was a bit disconcerting, because the portrait was the product of two years of sittings, discussions and consultations with the 77-year-old former PM.
“There was a long series of things that I did where I thought, ‘Maybe I’m never going to please him. I’m never going to get something that he really, really likes,’ ” Wyse said.
“Finally, we got it down to a number of things that seemed to work that we liked. I went back and did the portrait as we had decided I would do it.”
Wyse finished the portrait by Christmas 2014, but said nothing to House of Commons curator Johanna Mizgala. Instead, after a few weeks of reflection, he decided to paint a second portrait.
“I thought, ‘I’ve got a portrait that’s good. I’m just going to do another one, without asking any questions of anybody.’ ”
The second portrait was similar, but different. Wyse changed the angle of Martin’s body, the position of his hands and “drastically” changed the composition.
Wyse thought his second portrait “captured more of (Martin’s) character and more of his strength. It told more about him and his prime ministership and his legacy.”
Still, he was apprehensive when Martin and his entourage came to his studio last May to view both portraits. He needn’t have worried: Everyone agreed the second portrait was the best. “In the end, it was a lot of stress for nothing, because there was no question,” Wyse said. “I was very relieved.”
The $50,000 commission proved challenging, largely because Martin wanted the portrait to show him in the House of Commons while it was in session.
That introduced all sorts of complications. Martin left politics after his government’s defeat in 2006 and couldn’t pose in the House of Commons. “The idea of posing him in (then prime minister Stephen Harper’s) chair was out of the question,” Wyse said.
Instead, the artist was allowed to sketch, do colour studies and shoot photographs in the Commons when Parliament wasn’t sitting.
To capture the chamber’s lively atmosphere, Wyse had to surround his subject with fictional but realistic cabinet ministers, applauding and gesticulating at political opponents.
To do that, he sat in every chair, photographing himself in different poses. He then used those images to position the bodies and hands of Martin’s ersatz cabinet members.
(The second portrait) captured more of (Martin’s) character and more of his strength. It told more about him and his prime ministership and his legacy.
“All I had were empty chairs at that point, so I had to fill in the blanks.”
Similarly, Wyse stood in the prime minister’s place in various poses “to show myself how I would transfer his portrait in.” It needed to be believable, not look as if Martin’s image had been photo-shopped into the picture. It took “a lot of trial and error, a lot of paper in the trash.”
Getting the hands right was the trickiest bit, Wyse said. The furniture in the House of Commons is irregular and a bit strange. “Wherever you put your hand, your hand will do something weird.”
Wyse already has one political portrait — of former Speaker Peter Milliken, completed in 2012 — hanging in the Centre Block. But the portrait of Martin is “an entirely different kind of portrait,” he says. “Milliken’s portrait is very, very controlled and quiet and intense. This is a bit more energetic and chaotic.”
The portrait of Martin will be the 21st to hang in the Centre Block. It will occupy a place of honour just off Confederation Hall in the corridor leading to the House of Commons. Staff has already shifted the portrait of Martin’s old adversary, Jean Chrétien, to clear space for the new arrival.
“Of course, there’s some nervous anticipation about how it’s going to be received by the public,” said Wyse, who started growing his prodigious beard a year ago to emulate Johannes Brahms, whose second piano concerto he performed last month with the Orchestra of Northern New York. (Wyse, an American by birth who got Canadian citizenship in 2013, is also a world-class concert pianist.)
And that first portrait of Martin? It’s currently in Wyse’s studio in Osgoode, where he moved two years ago from Prescott. He hasn’t figured out yet what to do with it.
Could it find a place in a future national portrait gallery in Ottawa? “You never know,” Wyse said. “This is a part of history, too.”