Parliament Buildings

Ottawa

Charles Comfort

1900 - 1994

Born in Scotland, Charles Comfort moved to Winnipeg with his family in 1912 at age 12. He studied art in Winnipeg, at the Arts Student League in New York City and at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto where he came into contact with members of the Group of Seven.

His first showing, of watercolors before he shifted to oils, was in 1922. In the 1930s, he worked as a commercial artist and taught, first at the Ontario College of Art and then at the University of Toronto where he was a faculty member for some two decades until 1960. During the Second World War, he helped organize the official war artists’ initiative and became one himself for the last two years of the war.

The expressive design and dramatic characterization of his large portraits in the 1920s and 1930s are evident in his later landscapes as well as in his murals for Canada’s National Archives, National Library and the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Comfort was a founding member of the Federation of Canadian Artists and became the first artist to head the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, a position he held from 1959 to 1965.

Parliament Buildings shows a distinctive, back view of the structures as seen from across the Ottawa River. The work captures the high riverbank in the glory of its autumn coloring, with the iconic Peace Tower and verdigris copper-roofed Parliament buildings. The logging in the river and the British Union Jack flag speak to an earlier time in the nation’s capital.