Die Unterzeichnung des Friedens im Spiegelsaal, Versailles, 28. Juni 1919

Orpen was the official British artist at the Paris peace talks in 1919, and here he records the exact moment the Treaty of Versailles was signed, on the 28th of June that year, in the Hall of Mirrors at the palace of Versailles. The room was chosen on purpose. 48 years earlier, in that same hall, the victorious Germans had proclaimed their new empire after crushing France in war. Now France brought the defeated Germans back to the same mirrors to sign. Orpen grew to dislike the politicians he watched for months, thinking them vain, and in the painting he makes them small figures dwarfed by the gold and glass around them. Two German delegates sit at the near table, about to put their names to terms they said they could never meet. Orpen was paid 3,000 pounds for it, the largest of all the British war commissions.