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Georges Clemenceau
Cecilia Beaux (born Philadelphia, PA 1855-died Gloucester, MA 1942)
1920
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 46 7/8 x 36 3/4 in. (119.2 x 93.3 cm)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the National Art Committee
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
The United States War Portraits Commission hired Cecilia Beaux to paint this portrait of Georges Clemenceau, the premier of France who signed the World War I peace treaty at Versailles in 1919. Clemenceau hated having his portrait made, so Beaux prepared her composition from photographs and sketches while she waited for his return from a trip to the Middle East. She wrote: "Now I am after the most illusive and 'orneriest' of them all, and dear knows when I shall catch him . . ." Beaux finally went to his house for one sitting and from an oil sketch created this portrait of the statesman, standing in his study behind a desk with books and papers.
