Sir William Orpen, R.A., R.W.S., R.H.A
British, 1878 - 1931
Irish painter. He attended the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin (1891–7), and the Slade School of Art, London (1897–9), there winning the composition prize of 1899 with The Play Scene from Hamlet (Houghton Hall, Norfolk). He became a friend of Augustus John and joined the New English Art Club. From very early years he had been an impassioned student of the Old Masters, and he went to Paris with John in 1899 to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (Paris, Louvre). In the following years his perception of their works—in particular those of Rembrandt, Goya, Velázquez, Chardin, Hogarth and Watteau—became sophisticated. Orpen learnt much from the Old Masters without losing the personal character of his own work. The influence of Velázquez, in particular, is apparent in such early genre subjects as The Mirror (1900; London, Tate). His bravura portrait style was probably also indebted to Manet: his Homage to Manet (1909; Manchester, C.A.G.) was a group portrait of members of the New English Art Club, including Philip Wilson Steer, Walter Richard Sickert, Dugald Sutherland MacColl and Henry Tonks, sitting beneath Manet’s portrait of Eva Gonzalès (London, N.G.). Orpen was financially one of the most successful, and eventually one of the most honoured, portrait painters working in Britain in the 20th century. His vast and fashionable portrait practice destroyed his critical reputation, but a number of his portraits are outstanding, such as Ray Lancaster and Lloyd George (both London, N.P.G.), and the self-portrait, Orpsie Boy, You’re Not as Young as You Were, My Lad, Paris 1924 (1924; priv. col., see Arnold, p. 413). (For an example of his portraits see Diploma work.)
In 1917 Orpen was appointed an Official War Artist. An exhibition of his war paintings, watercolours and drawings was held in London in the spring of 1918. He offered all his works in the exhibition as well as all future war works as a gift to the nation, and the collection was accepted by the Imperial War Museum, London. In his illustrations to An Onlooker in France, 1917–1919 (1921), Orpen depicted scenes of trench warfare, often in grim detail, but he found it difficult in his larger paintings to come to terms with the broader implications of the war. He received a knighthood in June 1918 and was elected ARA in 1910 and RA in 1921. In 1919 he was appointed official artist to the British Peace Delegation, and he produced the large and very traditional group portrait, The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28th June 1919 (London, Imp. War Mus.). Orpen’s production of paintings and drawings, in spite of the relative brevity of his life, is impressively large: he worked quickly and drew almost daily, usually for long hours.
John Rothenstein. "Orpen, William." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T063956 (accessed May 1, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
Italian, 1883 - 1966
