Bulletin 12 (VI:2), 1968

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Robert Harris and The Fathers of Confederation

by Moncrieff Williamson

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After outlining the background to the commission and recording the fact that Harris had completed the picture and delivered it into the custody of the Minister of Public Works, the order continued as follows: "The Minister recommends that authority be given to accept the picture from Mr. Harris, and to pay him the sum of four thousand dollars ($4,000.) therefore, on the distinct understanding that the copyright in the picture rests with the Government, and that Mr. Harris is not entitled to any privileges or extra remuneration."

On 22 Jury 1884 a letter was received from Robert Harris, accepting payment and agreeing to the conditions. The following year, however, Harris, in a letter dated 22 February, again asked that "he be granted the copyright of the Quebec Conference picture painted by him for six or seven years at least from date." (12)

The next letter in the correspondence would appear to be one from the Secretary of the Department of Public Works, dated 3 March 1885, the concluding paragraph of which states: "I am directed by the Hon. the Minister of Public Works to inform you that your letter will receive his consideration as soon as his Parliamentary duties will allow." (13)

Harris later gave this account of the failure to grant him the requested copyright:

When writing to Sir Hector Langevin (14) to tell him where to send the payment I asked him to en sure me the copyright as was usual [my italics]. Publishers had written me wishing to negotiate as to royalties, etc. He replied when sending the cheque that it had been passed at the council without having been attended to, but that I might make my mind easy in the meantime as my interests should be safeguarded. Just then I got married and went to Europe for several months. On returning I found that people had been permitted to take photographs of the picture and lithographs. I simply felt at the time as though I had been knocked down and robbed of everything. The chief source of what profit I expected financially was gone. Such treatment was the more bitter to me because a number of bad reproductions were out about. Who by connivance or neglect was to blame I never knew nor cared to inquire. Someone made a good deal by the theft of my copyright to be sure. I hate whining so simply grinned and bore it though there was most solid ground for complaint.

However, there was always the satisfaction (perhaps to my vanity it may be said) of feeling that a work of mine was very intimately connected with the early days of Confederation. (15)

When the picture was first accepted by the Government, Sir Hector Langevin wrote that "it was very satisfactory." (16) Harris would appear to have enjoyed the most cordial relations with the Minister, as the following ex change of correspondence would indicate. Harris wrote to Sir Hector from Montreal on 7 April 1886:

Dear Sir,

If I have the picture of the Quebec Conference in a proper state I would like to send it to the coming exhibition of the Royal Canadian Academy in Montreal. I presume you would have no objection to my doing so. I am, Sir, yours very truly, Robert Harris.

Sir Hector's reply was written on the back of the Harris letter:

My dear Sir,
No objection,
Yours truly, H. Langevin. (17)

Perhaps Harris recognized the irony in the fact that it was Sir John A. Macdonald whose committee had adopted such an unbending attitude in the matter of copyright, for Sir John A. Macdonald was the central figure in the painting. On the other hand, one is inclined to believe that  in the early stages of negotiations, Harris felt that, with such men as Sir Hector Langevin and other Department of Public Works officials with whom he had dealings, the reproduction rights of the picture would be in good hands.

Harris was sufficiently a patriot not to mind if the Government should benefit, but to have it seemingly indifferent was quite intolerable. His request for copyright for "six or seven years" implied that if Government officials did not know how to handle the matter during such a short period, then he would show them!

In a letter written apparently in 1883, during one of his visits to Ottawa while the negotiations for the commission were taking place, Harris told his brother Ned: "In Ottawa I went on several evenings to the debates in the Commons, when the minor blather skates were springing up on the floor of the house like toadstools in a spruce grove. Certainly a man must be of good stolid philistine basis not to go mad under such a discipline. The majority of men there are a mob of !!! However, they learn a little better manners by going to the parliament." Unfortunately, there is no similar record of his views on Government officials who kept copyrights at the expense of an artist or did nothing to forestall piracy.

A final story of copyright infringement has an interesting background in relation to Harris's correspondence with Sir Joseph Pope. The following is a passage from a feature article which appeared in the Edmonton Journal in 1925, referring to the destruction of  The Fathers of Confederation:

But though the original was gone forever, there yet remains, fortunately for Canada, an exact replica of the original painting. When on July 6th, 1915, almost twelve years ago to the day, Edmonton's famous hostelry, the MacDonald Hotel, was formally opened to the public for the first time, a splendid reproduction in the natural colours of the original painting was found hanging over the big fireplace in the lounge.

Strangely enough, there is no record in the MacDonald hotel files giving the history of this painting. Even the name of the artist is not known. All that is known is that F. W. Bergman, then with the Grand Trunk Pacific Hotels system, who was responsible for the buying of much of the furnishings of the hotel, had commissioned an Ottawa artist to make a copy of the painting in oils, and of a size that would fit nicely into the space over the mantel of the big fireplace in the hotel's lounge. The painting, when finished, was shipped to Edmonton, the valuable canvas then being rolled to prevent it from becoming damaged in transit. (18)

Next Page | Pope's first letter

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