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Woodrow Wilson, 1917.
Sir William Orpen.
The White House,
Washington, DC.
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Sir William Orpen, the dashing Irish painter,
was unmatched in the swiftness and sureness of his touch.
Working impromptu at the peace conference at Versailles
which followed the end of the First World War, Orpen recorded
the head and shoulders of President Woodrow Wilson in
a breathtakingly real unfinished study. One of my own
portrait subjects, New York lawyer John J. McCloy, while
still a law student, served as an aide to Wilson at the
conference, and was actually in the room as the Orpen
painting was executed. McCloy recalls that the sitting
was concluded after ninety minutes! The result is one
of the twentieth century's most vivid and telling examples
of portrait painting.
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