Will and Kate paid tribute to the nation’s war veterans with a visit to the Canadian War Museum, where they met with veterans and war brides spanning several generations.
The couple was at the museum to help unveil a 40-foot wide painting titled “The Canadian Opposite Lens” (by the Welshman Augustus John) which depicts soldiers on Vimy Ridge against a chaotic backdrop of trucks and bursting shells.
“This impressive work of art, with connections to Canada and Great Britain, portrays part of the experience which helped define Canada as a nation during the First World War,” the president of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation Mark O’Neill said in a statement released ahead of the ceremony.
The painting was intended to be the centrepiece for a Canadian war memorial art gallery that was never built. Instead, the piece sat in John’s studio in London, England where he worked on it sporadically until his death.
While moving through the museum, the Duchess of Cambridge continued to impress royal watchers with grace and elegance.
Standing in front of an unfinished painting by celebrated Welsh artist Augustus John in Ottawa, Kate demonstrated an ease with officials and regular Canadians at the Canadian War Museum, royal watcher Bonnie Brownlee told CTV News Channel on Saturday.
“It’s almost as if she was born to be living the life that she lives right now,” she said.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_John
http://ogov.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/July2011/02/c2910.html
Ottawa Welsh Society 