William Henry Waddington, 'France at the Congress'

Signed 'T.' for Théobald Chartran, this chromolithograph portrays William Henry Waddington — French Foreign Minister and lead delegate to the Congress of Berlin — seated at a writing table, quill in hand, holding a copy of The Times. The caption, 'France at the Congress,' anchors him to the 1878 treaty that redistributed Ottoman territories after the Russo-Turkish War. Waddington was an Anglo-French figure: English-born, Cambridge-educated, yet a senior figure in the French Republic. Chartran plays on that duality — the prominent English newspaper underscoring his Anglophone comfort. The caricature exaggerates his ruddy beard and heavy frame. He reads as the composed, cosmopolitan diplomat history confirms him to be.