Blog

May 9, 2018

Who is that bearded man on the Archives blog?

This gentleman in his unframed oil portrait gazes at us from behind a protective muslin covering as we work in the Archives Collections Room. A note tacked to the back identifies him as Robert MacFarlane M.P. for Perth in 1867…Painting found above the false ceiling of the women’s washroom in the court house... Someone remembered seeing the name “Forster” on the frame. The late Lorne Brothers spent many hours searching for a “match” to the face in the unidentified oil painting after it was discovered in 1973, finally finding one among a group of “Perth’s Parliamentarians of the Past” in the Stratford Beacon’s 50^th anniversary edition of 1905.

Robert MacFarlane was born in 1835 in Lanark County. He set up his law practice in Stratford in 1857 with Daniel Home Lizars. When Lizars was appointed County Judge in 1864, MacFarlane entered into practice with John Idington, who later became a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada.  By this time, MacFarlane had been a Liberal member of parliament for a year, having beaten T.M. Daly in a hotly contested election. He was re-elected in 1867 to represent the Perth South riding in the first parliament of the new Dominion of Canada.

In the early morning of April 7, 1868 he and his fellow MP, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, a “Father of Confederation,” walked to their boarding houses after an extremely late session in the House. McGee was shot and killed as he entered the door of his rooming house. MacFarlane testified at the trial of the man accused of the assassination. He described how he and McGee walked together as far as Sparks St. and MacFarlane continued on to his lodgings in Lowertown. MacFarlane reported that he “heard no pistol shot. There were no other persons in company with us when I parted with Mr. McGee.” In a controversial trial, Patrick James Whelan was convicted and sentenced to death. He pleaded his innocence throughout his trial and on the scaffold, where he was publicly hanged. Whelan’s trial is now the subject of a critically acclaimed play, Blood on the Moon, by Pierre Brault.

MacFarlane married Mary Elizabeth Woods, daughter of James Woods, an early businessman in Stratford in 1870. MacFarlane died in office in 1872, just thirty-seven years old. He and his wife had buried their only child, an infant son named Woods, earlier that same year. Most members of the House of Commons, including Sir John A. MacDonald, accompanied MacFarlane’s body to the train station in Ottawa. He was brought back to Stratford by “a deputation from St. Marys, Downie and Stratford” and was buried in Avondale Cemetery with his son. The Beacon reported that “the funeral was perhaps the most imposing ever witnessed in town.”

Though J.W.L. Forster was only a young apprentice artist when MacFarlane died, it is clear that he later painted portraits based on photographs and descriptions of historical figures. The tragedy of MacFarlane’s sudden, early death, his connection to the first Dominion Parliament, D’Arcy McGee and Sir John A. MacDonald would have made him an appealing subject for Forster. Forster’s cousin, Dr. F.J.R. Forster, lived in Stratford and may have brought the story to the attention of the artist. In the portrait, MacFarlane is holding an open letter. MacFarlane spent his last hours, apparently recovering from his illness, catching up on correspondence. Forster liked to include objects significant to his historical portraits.

That the painting is likely a portrait of Robert MacFarlane by J.W.L. Forster is clear. How on earth this portrait of a prominent citizen, rendered by an internationally renowned Canadian artist, ended up on top of the false ceiling of the ladies washroom of the Perth County Courthouse remains very unclear. There is one clue in the T.J. Dolan collection at the Archives. Dolan, a journalist, had a research file on the history of the Perth County Law Association. In it, he transcribed some of their meeting minutes. On December 15, 1947 it was decided that the “portrait of Robert MacFarlane, presented by Mr. Morris, [would] be hung in the barristers’ room as it is and later matter of framing [would] be considered.” Perhaps the law association members tired of looking at the unframed oil painting and it made its way to an unorthodox storage area.