Primary sourcePhotograph27 May 1919

The Big Four at the Paris Peace Conference

Edward N. Jackson · 27 May 1919

A 1919 photograph of Lloyd George, Orlando, Clemenceau and Wilson, the four leaders who dominated the peace negotiations.

Clemenceau appears in this photograph among the "Big Four" leaders who negotiated the peace at Versailles.

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Black-and-white photograph of four men in dark suits standing on a stone step before a doorway. Left: a man with white hair talking with a man in a suit with a mustache. Right of them: a mustached older man with a bow tie, and a man with white hair at the far right. A Signal Corps stamp is visible at lower left. — Edward N. Jackson, The Big Four at the Paris Peace Conference, 27 May 1919. National Archives and Records Administration.

About this source

What it is

This photograph, taken by Edward N. Jackson of the US Army Signal Corps on 27 May 1919, shows the "Big Four": British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and US President Woodrow Wilson. It is held by the US National Archives and Records Administration.

Why it matters

These four men had the most influence at the Paris Peace Conference that produced the Treaty of Versailles. The photograph is widely used to teach the conference because it puts faces to the names behind the decisions that reshaped Europe after the First World War.

Look closer

What can you tell about each man's role just from his posture and position in the photo?
Why might a US Army photographer have been the one to take this picture?
What does this image leave out about the actual negotiations?

This photograph is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Georges Clemenceau on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.