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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Nude painting of Harper snags $5,000
Lars Hagberg / The Canadian Press archives Margaret Sutherland with her painting of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. (CP)
TORONTO -- A Kingston, Ont.-based artist's painting of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the nude has been sold.
Margaret Sutherland posted on Facebook there was a "tsunami of press and offers to buy" the painting during the Victoria Day weekend.
The large oil on canvas, which Stephen Harper did not pose for, shows the prime minister reclining on a chaise lounge wearing nothing but a subtle smile. A dog rests at his feet as a woman in business attire offers him what looks like a Tim Hortons cup on a silver platter.
The Edward Day Gallery in Toronto isn't saying who purchased the painting for $5,000.
Gallery owner Mary Sue Rankin said amid all the hubub the painting has created, Sutherland's piece has a serious message about Harper not living up to his promises.
For Sutherland, who completed the painting last year, the point of her piece was a satirical one. "It was a sort of a culmination of some general frustrations of the federal government's policies and what they were telling us," Sutherland had said, adding she had been peeved with the government's elimination of the long-form census and its closure of certain prison farms.
"The political message is to look for yourself and don't necessarily believe the party line."
The painting -- Emperor Haute Couture -- is also part of the pun as it carries a reference to The Emperor's New Clothes, a tale by Hans Christian Andersen in which a vain king parades around naked, believing his new suit is so superior that it's invisible to those unfit for their positions in life.
The painting is displayed at the Kingston public library as a finalist in the Juried Art Salon, a competition hosted by the Kingston Arts Council.
-- The Canadian Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 24, 2012 A8
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