Sir Robert Borden (1854-1937) was Prime Minister of Canada from 1911 to 1920, leading the nation during the gruelling years of the First World War. During the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, he sat for this portrait by Sir William Orpen, the popular British portrait painter. Both artist and subject were emotionally and physically exhausted, Borden as wartime leader of a nation that had lost 60,000 men, and Orpen, who had been a war artist. 

Borden believed that the record of the Canadian Expeditionary Force at the battles of Ypres, Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele, and in the final 100 days of the war, was the ultimate proof of Canadian nationhood. At the Peace Conference, he was responsible for international recognition of the autonomous status of the Commonwealth Dominions. 
(National Archives of Canada) 
  

Notes: 

• More on William Orpen
• To National Archives of Canada