The quiet – and usually secret – behind-the-scenes activities of diplomats are naturally not well recorded in art. However portraits have been commissioned of famous and senior diplomats over the centuries, often on their retirement or as a result of successful negotiations and treaties. Perhaps the most famous and important diplomatic event of the past hundred years, the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which ended the Great War and deeply affected the rest of the century, was formally recorded by William Orpen for the Imperial War Museum.