STRATHCONA & MOUNT ROYAL, Lord (Sir Donald Smith)(1906)

Sir Donald Alexander Smith was born in Scotland on August 6, 1820. He was one of the Canadian commercial pioneers, railroad builders and investors. He became a Canadian High Commissioner and was raised to the peerage in 1897. He owned a beautiful stone house in Dorchester Street, Montreal in 1883 which was often used in later years by diplomatic bodies. He died on January 21, 1914.

Bibliography of sitter:

Beckles Willson, The Life of Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, 2 Vols., The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1915.

Donna McDonald, Lord Strathcona: A Biography of Donald Alexander Smith, 1996.

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Town & Country, New York, October 13, 1906, reported that Muller-Ury had painted Lord Strathcona whilst visiting Scotland during the summer. The New York Herald, Sunday, October 14, 1906, in an article entitled ‘Mr. Muller-Ury’s Summer Abroad’ repeats this, as does the Urner Wochenblatt, Altdorf, Switzerland, November 10, 1906.

The New York Herald, December 8, 1906, reviewing the Knoedler exhibition at which No. 4 above was exhibited, says ‘There is…another of Lord Strathcona, which Mr. Ury painted in Scotland this Autumn. Lord Strathcona has not been painted for twenty-five years. The portrait which Mr. Muller-Ury painted for Lord Strathcona is a three-quarter one; the one on view at Knoedler’s is a bust length which the artist made for himself.’