Photo via Kijiji
A “scandalous” nude painting of former Canadian leader Stephen Harper has resurfaced after a former civil servant listed the item for sale on Kijiji this month.
The painting shows the former leader of the Conservatives casually lying nude on a sofa surrounded by a crowd of bureaucrats—one of whom is offering Harper what looks like a Tim Hortons beverage. The painting was purchased back in 2012 for $5,000 [$3,760 USD] by Danielle Potvin, a resident of Gatineau, Quebec.
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The painting made headlines in 2012 when news of its creation spread like wildfire across the internet, although no one was aware of its whereabouts after its purchase.
Potvin, who has now listed the painting for $8,800 [$6,618 USD] on Kijiji, told the Edmonton Journal that she was worried about repercussions of telling people she owned it while Harper was still prime minister, as she was working in the government at the time.
Although the painting drew some controversy when it was first unveiled, even conjuring up a human rights complaint that was shot down by a judge later that year, Potvin thought the painting was “brilliant.”
“I thought, My God, this is unbelievable,” she said. “I thought that the artist was going to be sued by the government or by the prime minister. Then I started reading about it, and it was quite interesting. Not because it’s just nude, but there’s a story behind it.”
The creator of the painting, Margaret Sutherland—who went by the name Emperor Haute Couture when the piece first cropped up online—says that she created the painting as a way to vent about how dissatisfied she was with the Harper government.
“It was a sort of a culmination of some general frustrations of the federal government’s policies and what they were telling us,” she told the Globe and Mail in 2012.
“Satire is a great way to make valid social comment and have some fun at the same time.”
It is unclear if Harper will come out of retirement to comment on the painting.
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