William Orpen
1878-1931
Born at Stillorgan, County Dublin, Orpen trained at the Metropolitan School, Dublin and then at the Slade School in London where he was a contemporary of Augustus John, Ambrose McEvoy and Wyndham Lewis. It was at the Slade that his powers as a draughtsman singled him out as a prodigy. In 1899 he won the Slade Composition Prize for his work The Play Scene from Hamlet. Painting intimate interiors, genre and conversation-pieces comparable with McEvoy and Rothenstein, Orpen gained a youthful success with his picture The Mirror, 1900. In the Autumn of 1903 he and John opened the Chelsea Art School, where Orpen lectured on anatomy. Spending long periods back in Ireland, he was also a part-time teacher at the Dublin School of Art, 1902-14, and became an important figure among Irish painters and collectors, forming friendships with Sean Keating, Hugh Lane and George Moore. Joining the army in 1916, he was selected as an Official War Artist which caused a break with Sean Keating. His pictures of the Somme battlefields were exhibited at Agnew's in 1918, and the large controversial composition To The Unknown British Soldier in France was exhibited in 1923. A founder member of the National Portrait Society in 1911, Orpen increasingly devoted himself to portraiture, maintaining studios in both Paris and London during the 1920s. Knighted in 1918, Orpen had exhibited at the NEAC from 1899, the RA from 1908, and was intstrumental in the formation of the Chenil Gallery in 1906. A memorial exhibition of his work was held at the Knoedler Gallery, New York in 1932.
Works Available
Normandy Landscape