Background

William Orpen was born on November 27, 1878 in Stillorgan, Dublin, Ireland. He was a son of Arthur Herbert Orpen, a solicitor, and Anne Caulfield. Both Arthur and Anne were amateur painters.

William was the fourth and youngest child in the family. Among his well-known siblings were Richard Caulfield Orpen, a renowned architect, and Goddard Henry Orpen, a historian.

Education

In 1890, six weeks before his thirteenth birthday, William entered the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (present-day National College of Art and Design), where he remained for the next six years. Approximately in 1897, the artist enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he mastered oil painting and began to experiment with different painting techniques and effects. There, at Slade, William's mentors included Henry Tonks, Philip Wilson Steer and Frederick Brown.

Career

In 1902, together with Augustus Edwin John, William established a private teaching studio, the Chelsea Art School. During the period from 1902 till 1915, the artist divided his time between London and Dublin. While in Dublin, he served as a teacher at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (present-day National College of Art and Design). William's students there included such well-known artists, as Seán Keating, Grace Gifford, Patrick Tuohy and others.

In 1904, Orpen, together with his friend Hugh Lane, visited Paris and Madrid. Some time later after that trip, William received a commission from Lane to create a series of portraits of contemporary Irish figures for the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin. Later, in 1906, Orpen helped his brother-in-law, Jack Knewstub, to set up the Chenil Gallery.

In 1908, William exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy of Arts. This helped to develop his reputation as a portrait painter. During the period from 1908 till 1912, Orpen and his family spent the summer on the coast in Howth, north of Dublin. It was there, that the artist started to paint in the open air and also developed a distinctive plein-air style, that featured figures, composed of touches of colour without a drawn outline. The most notable of these works was "Midday on the Beach", the work, which was shown at the New English Art Club in 1910.

After the outbreak of the First World war, Orpen was appointed an official war painter and given the rank of Major. During his stay on the Western Front, he completed numerous drawings and paintings of private soldiers, as well as official portraits of generals and politicians. Other notable paintings included "Dead Germans in a Trench", "Members of the Allied Press Corps" and "Ready to Start". Following the armistice, Orpen was made an official portrait artist to the Versailles Peace Conference, where he completed several works, including "The Signing of the Peace".

Orpen was deeply affected by the suffering he witnessed in the war. His feelings and misgivings about the treatment of common soldiers was evidenced by his painting "To the Unknown British Soldier Killed in France", first exhibited in 1923. This picture portrayed a flag-draped coffin, flanked by a pair of ghostly and wretched soldiers, clothed only in tattered blankets, set against the opulent backdrop of the Paris Peace Conference. Although, the work was widely admired by the general public, it was attacked by the authorities and Orpen was forced to paint out the soldiers before the picture was accepted by the Imperial War Museum.

In April 1917, William went to France as an official war painter in the Royal Army Service Corps. While in France, Orpen painted portraits of Sir Douglas Haig, Hugh Trenchard, Herbert Plumer, Henry Rawlinson, Henry Wilson, James McCudden, Arthur Rhys-Davids, Reginald Hoidge, John Edward Seely, John Cowans, Adrian Carton de Wiart and Ferdinand Foch.

In 1919, Orpen was elected a member of the Royal Academy, and two years later, in 1921, he was made a member of the Academy. At that time, he also returned to his portrait painting practice and continued painting London's elite, including the British wartime Prime Minister David Lloyd-George. Orpen continued to paint until his death.

Achievements

• William Orpen was chiefly famous as one of the leading fashionable portraitists of his day. His most famous works include "Blown Up", "Ready to Start", "To the Unknown British Soldier in France" and others.
  
  In 1918, he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) for his war paintings. Some time later, in 1921, Orpen acted as a president of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers.
  
  Also, the auction record for a work by William Orpen was set in 2001, when his painting, entitled "Portrait of Gardenia St. George With Riding Crop", was sold at James Adams, in Dublin, for £1,983,500. In 2003, Orpen's Portrait of Mrs St. George was sold at Sotheby's for £924,000.
  
  Today, his works are kept in the collections of different museums, art institutions and galleries, including Imperial War Museum in London, Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City, Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Tate Gallery in London and others.

Works

More photos

• book

  • An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 1921
  • Stories of old Ireland and myself 1924

• painting

  • Portrait of a Girl Wearing a Green Dress

  • The Mirror

  • Lottie of Paradise Walk

  • The Spanish Woman

  • The Angler

  • Soldiers at Cany

  • The Chess Players

  • Charles Buller Heberden, Principal

  • Improvisation on a Barrel Organ

  • Portrait of the Artist

  • Homage to Manet

  • Self-portrait

  • Regent Street

  • The Selecting Jury of the New English Art Club

  • Leonard A. Scott Stokes, PRIBA, RGM

  • Ernest Egbert Blyth, Last Mayor & First Lord Mayor of Norwich

  • The Studio

  • A Grenadier Guardsman

  • A Gunner's Shelter in a Trench, Thiepval

  • Self-Portrait painting Sowing New Seed

  • Blown Up

  • German Sick- Captured at Messines, in a Canadian Hospital

  • German Wire, Thiepval

  • German Planes Visiting Cassel

  • Ready to Start Self-Portrait, 6 octobre 1917

  • Soldiers and Peasants, Cassel

  • The First Chief Controller, Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps in France, Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan, CBE, DSC

  • Le Chef de l'Hotel Chatham, Paris

  • To the Unknown British Soldier in France

Membership

• New English Art Club , United Kingdom

  1900

• 

  associate

  Royal Hibernian Academy , Ireland

  1904

• member

  Royal Hibernian Academy , Ireland

  1908

• 

  associate

  Royal Academy of Arts , United Kingdom

  1919

• member

  Royal Academy of Arts , United Kingdom

  1921

• president

  International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers , United Kingdom

  1921

• National Portrait Society

  1908

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "However, though he was financially very successful in his main occupation as a portrait painter (reputedly earning more than £54,000 in 1929 alone) his technique of using photographs as an aid did not meet with universal approval." — Mark Bryant, an author
  
  "I have never had any hesitation in describing William Orpen as the greatest of all war artists, out-rivalling in earlier centuries Francisco Goya, Jacques Callot and the many masters of the Italian Renaissance who depicted the regular states in warfare of their times." — Bruce Arnold

Connections

When William was a student of the Slade School of Fine Art, he became engaged to Emily Scobel, who was a model. However, in 1901, she ended their relationship. The same year, Orpen married Grace Knewstub. Their marriage produced three daughters.

William and Grace's marriage wasn't happy, and approximately in 1908, the artist begun a long running affair with Evelyn Saint-George, who was a well-connected American millionairess, based in London. Their relationships produced one child.

During his lifetime, Orpen had affairs with many other women.

Father:

Arthur Herbert Orpen

Mother:

Anne Caulfield

Brother:

Richard Caulfield Orpen

Brother:

Goddard Henry Orpen

life partner:

Emily Scobel

Wife:

Grace Knewstub

life partner:

Evelyn Saint-George

mentor:

Henry Tonks

mentor:

Philip Wilson Steer

mentor:

Frederick Brown

Friend:

Hugh Lane

References

• Orpen: Mirror to an Age
  1982
• William Orpen, an Outsider in France This art-historical study examines, within the context of the global crisis, that WWI was, and from various theoretical, philosophical and literary angles, Orpen's singular and at times provocative work.
  2018
• William Orpen: Politics, Sex and Death This book, which accompanies a retrospective exhibition at the Imperial War Museum London in January 2005, reappraises an artist who, at the time of his death in 1931, was probably the best-known painter in Britain. The book reveals the full variety of William Orpen's work from his highly accomplished portraits, his revitalization of the nude and the conversation piece, to his extraordinary allegories and war paintings. It analyzes the series of self-portraits, many mocking his own character with a mixture of humor and bitterness, that are a particular feature of his oeuvre.
  2005