Portrait
A large portrait of William Davidson felling trees on the Miramichi hangs on an internal staircase of the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta. This is very appropriate as Davidson was a native of Moray, very near the boundary with Banffshire, Scotland.
The painting has been in the possession of the hotel for many years, and hotel staff believe that it was painted in the last years of the 19th century. It identifies Davidson as Canada's first lumberman, surely a misnomer. He was, perhaps, the first English speaking person to establish a significant commercial lumber business in Canada. But long before, French settlers cut trees for their own use and for local markets.
Read more about this topic: William Davidson (lumberman)
Famous quotes containing the word portrait:
“Few persons who have ever sat for a portrait can have felt anything but inferior while the process is going on.”
—Anthony Powell (b. 1905)
“Giles Lacey: I say, old boy, I’m trying to find exactly what your wife does do.
Maxim de Winter: She sketches a little.
Giles Lacey: Sketches. Oh not this modern stuff, I hope. You know, portrait of a lamp shade upside down to represent a soul in torment.”
—Robert E. Sherwood (1896–1955)
“Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called “self-interestedness.” This was not a portrait of man “warts and all.” It was all wart.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)