Please note that the following is a digitized version of a selected article from White House History Quarterly, Issue 51, originally released in print form in 2018. Single print copies of the full issue can be purchased online at Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All photographs contained in this journal unless otherwise noted are copyrighted by the White House Historical Association and may not be reproduced without permission. Requests for reprint permissions should be directed to rights@whha.org. Contact books@whha.org for more information. Š 2018 White House Historical Association. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions.
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Painted at the Paris PEACE CONFERENCE B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N
A Portrait of President Woodrow Wilson by William Orpen LYDIA TEDERICK
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This life study of Woodrow Wilson, made during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 by Sir William Orpen, was a gift to the permanent White House Collection from Bernard Baruch Jr. in 1962. The gift was made in reply to an inquiry by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and is seen above in the Red Room in December 1962.
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in 1962, first lady jacqueline kennedy received a letter from Bernard M. Baruch Jr., the son of the financier and statesman, Bernard M. Baruch. Dated April 2, in response to her letter of March 7, 1962, it read, “You may have the Orpen portrait of Woodrow Wilson for the White House which I am glad to present in the name of my father.”1 With this gift, a remarkable portrait of President Wilson was acquired for the permanent White House collection. The painting arrived that summer and was hung in the Red Room on the State Floor. The life study was painted by Sir William Orpen in 1919 during the Paris Peace Conference, one of several likenesses the artist executed of conference participants. Many were studies for larger commissioned paintings of the Peace Conference, including one of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles entitled, The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28th June 1919, now
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in the collection of the Imperial War Museum in London. A successful society portraitist who worked primarily in London, Orpen was chosen by the British Department of Information to document the war and went to France in 1917. In addition to portraits of military leaders and soldiers in the trenches, he captured the destruction left by battle. Orpen was knighted in 1918 for his wartime service.2 In 1919, Orpen was commissioned by the Ministry of Information to document the Peace Conference in Paris. He arrived in Paris in January and began to paint and sketch likenesses of the participants including Woodrow Wilson and the prime ministers of Italy, France, and Britain. In 1921, he wrote a book about his wartime experiences and described attending the conference and having portrait sittings with delegation members at the Astoria. He observed, “President Wilson made a great hit in the Press with his smile. He was pleased at
J O H N F. K E N N E D Y P R E S I D E N T I A L L I B R A R Y A N D M U S E U M
previous spread and above
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Colonel Edward M. House posed for Orpen’s Peace Conference painting and was instrumental in convincing a reluctant Wilson to sit for the work as well. Although the president and House continued to correspond, they never saw each other again after the treaty was signed. below
Woodrow Wilson is seen leaving the Palace of Versailles with Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France and Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Great Britian after signing the peace treaty.
that and after this he never failed to let you see all his back teeth.”3 The president initially refused the artist’s request to sit for him. Orpen recalled, “As his time was fully occupied then with Peace Conference work, he regretted that he was unable to give any sittings.” Among the members of the U.S. delegation who agreed to pose was presidential adviser Colonel E. M. House who, when learning of the president’s refusal exclaimed, “Refused? . . . What damned rot! . . . he’s got a damned sight more time than I have. What day would you like him to come to sit?” Orpen named a day and the colonel saw to it that he was there.4 Orpen wrote about the first sitting with the president and his interactions with the security detail: The President arrived, smiling as usual; but he was a good sort, and he laughed hard when I told him the story of the detectives. He was very genial and sat well, but even then he was very nervous and twitchy. He told endless stories, mostly harmless and some witty.5 On June 10, Colonel House described a visit to see Wilson’s portrait:
TOP: AN ONL OOKER IN FRANCE / BOT TOM: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Orpen was in despair because the President told him he would not
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be able to sit again. He did not tell him this until after the sitting yesterday, therefore Orpen said he had not done some of the things he would have done had he known it was to be the last. I told him not to worry, because I was sure we could get the President to sit for a third time as agreed. I liked the portrait, although it shows up some of the President’s prominent features.6 The colonel was evidently successful for when he arrived for his own last sitting on June 21, he found Wilson with the artist. House later said, “Orpen has got a good portrait of him, though not a flattering one. His hair is seldom as ruffled as Orpen has it. . . . Orpen thanked me for having persuaded the President to sit for him.”7 Orpen’s disdain for the politicians grew as the conference continued. He called them, “frocks,” for the coats worn by the diplomats. He wrote, “The fighting man, alive, and those who fought and died—all the people who made the Peace Conference possible, were being forgotten, the ‘frocks’ reigned supreme. One was almost forced to think that the ‘frocks’ won the war.”8
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above
The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28th June 1919 by William Orpen. Colonel House is seated second from the left and President Woodrow Wilson is seated fifth from left.
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opposite
The son of amateur painters, Sir William Orpen was born in Ireland in 1878. A prolific artist and society portraitist in London, Orpen documented World War I in France as well as the Paris Peace Conference. In this self portrait made in 1917 Orpen is seen wearing a helmet and coat as if sketching on the battlefield.
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The signing of the treaty occurred in Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors. Using a vertical canvas, Orpen painted the scene to emphasize the room’s magnificent interior and to lessen the significance of the politicians. He placed the treaty signers and diplomats along a table at the bottom of the painting in such a way that they were dwarfed by the room’s architectural detail.9 On the day of the signing, Orpen positioned himself in front of the center window in the Hall of Mirrors and observed:
A B O V E A N D O P P O S I T E : I M P E R I A L WA R M U S E U M
All the “frocks’”did all their tricks to perfection. President Wilson showed his back teeth; Lloyd George waved his Asquithian mane; Clemenceau whirled his grey-gloved hands about like windmills; [Secretary of State Robert] Lansing drew his pictures and Mr. Balfour [British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour] slept. It was all over. The “frocks” had won the war. The “frocks” had signed the Peace! The Army was forgotten. Some dead and forgotten, others maimed and forgotten, others alive and well—equally forgotten. Yet the sun shone outside my window and the fountains played, and the German Army—what was left of it—was a long, long way from Paris.10 The portrait is thought to have been in the Wilson’s possession prior to ownership by Bernard Baruch. An image of it was made available for publication during the 1920s. One reproduction found in a 1926 newspaper included a caption that read, “A New Portrait of Woodrow Wilson—By special arrangement, the striking portrait of the War President by the English artist Sir William Orpen is photographed for reproduction. Mrs. Wilson considers it the best of all portraits of her distinguished husband.”11 William Orpen resumed his artistic career after the war. In addition to
publishing An Onlooker in France in 1921, he also wrote Stories of Old Ireland and Myself and edited Outline of Art. His health, however, was compromised by illness sustained during the war and exacerbated by heavy drinking. He died in 1931 at the age of 53.12 notes 1.
Bernard M. Baruch Jr. to Jacqueline Kennedy, April 2, 1962, copy in object folder, Office of the Curator, The White House. Bernard M. Baruch (1870–1965) was a close adviser to President Woodrow Wilson and served as the chair of the War Industries Board, established during World War I. This painting was discussed in an essay by William Kloss, Art in the White House: A Nation’s Pride (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008) 2nd ed., 253.
2. John Hutchinson, Vera Ryan, and James White. William Orpen: A Centenary Exhibition (Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1978), 14. 3. William Orpen. An Onlooker in France (London: Williams and Norgate, 1921), 87–88. 4. Ibid, 92. “Colonel” was an honorary title given to Edward M. House (1858–1938) in recognition of his role during an 1892 gubernatorial campaign in Texas.
6. Edward M. House, prefatory note in The Intimate Papers of Colonel House: The Ending of the War, ed. Charles Seymour (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1928) 470, 479. Colonel House noted that his first sitting with Orpen occurred on May 24, 1919. 7. House, prefatory note in Intimate Papers of Colonel House, ed. Seymour, 482. 8. Orpen, An Onlooker in France, 89. 9. See entry on The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28th June 1919 by William Orpen, 1919, oil on canvas, in the collection of the Imperial War Museum, London, http:// www.iwm.org.uk. In addition to this work, the Imperial War Museum has numerous paintings and drawings executed by Orpen during the war as well as two other commissioned works from the Peace Conference: A Peace Conference at the Quai d’Orsay (1919) and To the Unknown British Soldier in France (c. 1919–27). 10. Orpen, An Onlooker in France, 106–7. See also Hutchinson, Ryan, and White. William Orpen, 9. 11. A microfilmed copy of the illustration was found in the October 8, 1926, edition of the Glendale Daily Press and sent to Office of the Curator with a letter from George Ellison, July 19, 2001. 12. Hutchinson, Ryan, and White. William Orpen, 10, 14.
5. Ibid., 95. The president’s first sitting with Orpen occurred in late May or early June 1919.
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