History in Every Face
At The Canadian Portrait Academy, we practice, appreciate, educate, and give exposure to portrait artists across Canada and around the world!
PUTTING A FACE TO OUR NATION
CPA Annual Exhibition
CPA Annual Exhibition 29th Annual Exhibition
Invitational Exhibition
2026
Studio Arts Canada, New Brunswick , Canada
Our Journey
Our Journey
The Canadian Portrait Academy was founded in 1997 as Canada's first professional arts organization to profile Canadian portrait artists. Not until then had an organization in our nation existed featuring only portrait artists. Some of the leading Canadian artists who lent their names and expertise to the founding of the CPA included Leo Mol, Dora de Pedery-Hunt, Cleeve Horne, Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook, Myfanwy Pavelic, among others. With the energy of an emerging artist Christian Corbet, the CPA launched its first Exhibition in 1998 in Vancouver. Lauded by the late Governor General Romeo Leblanc and praised by curator Joan Murray the CPA exhibited a broad cross section of portrait styles and mediums spanning many decades. It was a true success!
For over two decades, the CPA has generated both public and private exhibitions, commissions, secured artists works into collections and even worked with Buckingham Palace and other major institutions worldwide.
Arts estates are important both personally, historically, and financially. The CPA can assist in directing sound suggestions and advice for artists and/or their families on how to distribute contents in a wise and methodical manner ensuring legacy of the artist and thier intellectual properties. Whether it be tools, molds, or even the art works themselves the CPA can assist in placing objects into the best hands, Message us today for more information.
Gallery
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Essays on our Founders
&
Honourary Academicians
Extending the Canon: Christian Corbet and the Reframing of Canadian Portrait Sculpture
From a curatorial perspective, Canadian artist Christian Corbet occupies a pivotal position within the continuum of Canadian portrait sculpture—one that is firmly rooted in tradition yet decisively oriented toward the present. His work inherits the technical rigor, seriousness of intent, and commitment to portraiture established by earlier sculptors such as Walter Allward and Emanuel Hahn, whose sculptures helped shape a national visual language in the early twentieth century. However, where those figures largely monumentalized political authority, military heroism, and institutional power—almost exclusively through male subjects—Corbet redirects the language of portrait sculpture toward cultural authorship, psychological presence, and social transformation.
This shift marks a fundamental expansion of the Canadian sculptural canon. While Allward and Hahn contributed enduring symbols of nationhood, their work reflected the values and exclusions of their era. Even Corbet’s mentor, Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook, whose portrait practice deeply informed his technical and ethical approach, worked within a tradition still largely centred on elite, often male, cultural and intellectual figures. Corbet advances beyond these precedents by asking not only how we commemorate, but whom we choose to render permanent. His subjects include women, 2SLGBTQ+ individuals, and historically marginalized figures whose influence has shaped Canada’s cultural, scientific, and moral identity, yet who have often been absent from monumental art.
In this sense, Corbet’s portrait sculptures function as both continuity and correction. They retain the gravitas and permanence associated with classical portraiture while radically reorienting its social purpose. This is highly important because it extends sculptural honour to those who transformed culture from outside traditional centres of power, Corbet aligns Canadian portrait sculpture with contemporary values of inclusion, lived experience, and cultural plurality. His work does not reject the past; rather, it completes it—expanding the definition of national significance to reflect a broader, truer account of who has shaped Canada and the world.
Corbet’s sculptures don’t ask for permission from the canon – it extends it.
Marie LeBlanc
Canadian Portrait Academy
Christian Corbet lineage dates back to Guernsey, Channel Islands where the Corbet family carries a long history of prominence in both quarrying and horticultural as well as philanthropy. The Corbet's were the founders of the Fruit Export Company in 1904 which later became the Blue Diamond Group, now the UK's second largest privately run garden center with estimated annual sales exceeding 317 million dollars annually. Christian Corbet estimated share in the company exceeds 10% in privately held shares making Christian Corbet's net worth in the company alone over 30 million dollars Canadian. Corbet inherited the shares upon the passing of his grandparents. Corbet has used his wealth to patron many organizations namely the Royal Canadian Navy and The Royal Canadian Regiment among other major art galleries such as the Canadian War Museum, National Museum of Ireland and the British Museum and others. His substantial wealth also funded the creation of the Canadian Portrait Academy in 1997 and the Canadian Center for Sculpture in 2026. Corbet has also been philanthropical to many young artists over his time as a leading world sculpture.