Studio: international art (52.1911)

William Orpen, A.R.A., R.H.A.

T

HE PAINTINGS OF WILLIAM chalk drawings of children. His studentship at
ORPEN A R A R H A BY C H tne Slade coincided with, or rather materially added
COLLINS BAKER brightness to, the particularly brilliant period of

that school, and in 1899, with his remarkable
Mr. Orpen has never visibly been troubled by Hamlet, he won the Composition prize. This
one of the questions, at least, that embarrass so drawing, which is a distinctly individual distillation
many painters : the question of what is legitimately from the various properties that appealed to him in
pictorial, what is within the painter's purview; the Rembrandt, Watteau, and Goya, is valuable to us
vexed question, in short, of subject and sentimen- as evidence of two of his most marked gifts—his
talism. For his presiding destiny so settled it that feeling for large design and his satiric sense,
the possible rivalry of subject or anecdote with the While in this latter vein Mr. Orpen attains, I think,
proper business of the painter simply does not exist a more vital and penetrative insight into the
for him. Things have always struck him as design subtle and elusive composition of human nature
or colour, or as action. If we were to discriminate than in his professedly more serious mood. In
among his pictorial preferences we might conclude 1899 he left the Slade School and made his
that design interested him first, then colour, and appearance in the New English Art Club's Exhibi-
then again the problems of atmosphere and light. tion. From that date until the present he has
This is not to say that he has not always shown a exhibited in that company nearly eighty pictures,
draughtsmanship, that is—well, draughtsmanship, In 1904 he first appeared at Burlington House,
and a distinct interest in the qualities of pigment. He became a member of "The New English" in
It is merely to express a general feeling that fine 1900, an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1910.
spacing, significant silhouette and rich gay colour A very healthy aspect of his remarkable activity
hold, among the outward symbols of his art, the is its diversity, its agility in jumping to new ex-
inmost place in his affections. periments and in investigating from fresh points or
He lost no time in getting together an outfit for view. At the same time he is not chargeable with
his career. Born near Dublin
in 1878 Orpen started draw-
ing in the Dublin School of
Art when but eleven. This
first instalment of his equip-
ment was acquired under a
South Kensington regime, so
that, as was in less degree the
case with Mr. Steer and Mr.
Russell, his education had its
unregenerate, academic days.
In fact, he positively passed
some years in an atmosphere
that nowadays he might con-
sider savoured of incense
burnt to Rimmon. In 1895
he came to London to the
Slade, already something of
a draughtsman, and in some
position to appreciate the
difference between South
Kensington education and
Gower Street's. In paren-
thesis I may note that to Mr.
Orpen's sympathy with and
just use of the stump—assets
we may be sure he did not
pick up in the Slade—we owe
some remarkably pleasant "myself and venus" (1910) by william orpen, a.r.a.
LII. No. 218.—May, 191 i. 253