Title: Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Laird Borden - Prime Minister of Canada (1911-1920)
Date: Mar. 1918.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Orpen, William
National Archives of Canada, negative no. PA-028128
During the 1919 Paris Peace Conference at the end of the First World War, the Canadian Prime Minister, Sir Robert Laird Borden (1854-1937), sat to Sir William Orpen, a prominent British portrait painter. This engaging oil sketch is the result. The toll of the war efforts shows clearly in Borden's weary expression, portrayed by an artist who had seen the devastation of the war firsthand as a war artist working for the Canadian Memorial. The portrait served as a model for a large group portrait of the conference delegates now in the Imperial War Museum, London.