George Theodore Berthon

George Théodore Berthon (3 May 1806 – 18 January 1892) was a Canadian portrait painter. Born in Vienna to a well-known French portrait painter, René Théodore Berthon, he emigrated first to Great Britain, and then to Canada, sometime before 1845. He specialised in portraiture of high-ranking British and Canadian officials, developing a sense of realism and simplicity. He died in Toronto in 1892.

Biography Berthon's father, René Théodore Berthon, was a court painter to Napoleon I, and likely trained his son in art. As well, his knowledge of art in Paris would have been significant: his father was a student of Jacques Louis David. As an adult, he lived in England for a number of years in the household of Sir Robert Peel to teach Peel's daughters drawing and French. The first verifiable record of his emigration to Canada is an advertisement for his portraiture services in a Toronto newspaper in 1845.

Berthon was notable in the history of Canada for his creation of formal portraits characterized by a sense of realism. He focused on defining his subjects' features and characters without idealization. The composition of his portraits remains simple with dark backgrounds. His work is important both as a historical record and as an example of the style of Canadian portraiture during that period.

He was nominated as a founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts but failed to qualify. He was elected a life member of the Ontario Society of Artists in 1891.

He died of a bronchial infection, at his Toronto home, in 1892.

Paintings by George Théodore Berthon