William Orpen was born at Oriel, Grove Avenue, Blackrock, County Dublin, Ireland, on 27 November 1878, into an Anglo-Irish family. He was the fifth and youngest child of the solicitor, Arthur Orpen, and his wife, Anne (née Caulfeild), daughter of the Rt Rev Charles Caulfeild, Bishop of Nassau. His eldest sibling, Richard Caulfeild Orpen, became an architect and watercolourist.
Orpen’s father intended that he should study law and enter the family legal firm, which had been founded by his paternal grandfather, Sir Richard Orpen.
However, his mother encouraged his interest in painting, and supported his wish to go to art school. She won out, and, in 1891, at the age of 13, Orpen entered the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin, to study under its headmaster, James Brenan. During his six years there, he showed great talent and won every major prize and scholarship.
In 1897, Orpen moved to London and enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he was taught by Fred Brown, Henry Tonks and Wilson Steer. He benefitted particularly from the teaching of Tonks, following his encouragement to study the old masters and make strength of drawing the basis of one’s art. As a result, he stood out as possibly the finest draughtsman among a highly talented intake of students, which included Augustus John and Ambrose McEvoy, both of whom became friends. Among other awards, he won the Slade Composition Prize for The Play Scene from ‘Hamlet’ (Houghton Hall, Norfolk), in his final year, in 1899. From that time, he began to show work at the New English Art Club, of which his Slade teachers were prominent members. Then, in 1900, he too became a member, when The Mirror (Tate) proved a significant early success when shown at its winter exhibition. In 1901, he held his first solo show at the Carfax Gallery.
It was also in 1901 that Orpen married Grace Knewstub, a daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite painter, Walter John Knewstub. Her sister was the actress with the stage name of ‘Alice Kingsley’, who in 1899 had married the painter, William Rothenstein.
The Orpens soon settled at 11 & 13 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, and they would have three daughters. In 1903, Orpen founded Chelsea Art School at 4 & 5 Rossetti Studios, 72 Flood Street, with Augustus John and his own brother-in-law, Jack Knewstub, as secretary. Before this closed in 1907, Orpen bought the house next to Chelsea Town Hall, and set up the Chenil Gallery, which was managed by Jack Knewstub, and at which both he and John held exhibitions.
From 1902 until the outbreak of the First World War, Orpen shared his time between London and Dublin, and taught part-time at his alma mater, the Metropolitan School of Art. He was elected an associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1904 and a full Academician in 1907. From about that time, he would rent a house at Howth Head, just north of Dublin Bay. He played a significant role in Irish cultural life, mixing with painters and collectors, and contributing to the Celtic revival. The friendships that he cultivated included those with his distant cousin, the dealer and collector, Hugh Lane, and the novelist and critic, George Moore. He also formed a strong bond with some of his students, and especially Séan Keating, who arrived at the Metropolitan School in 1909, and eventually became Orpen’s studio assistant.
In 1904, Orpen accompanied Lane on a trip to France and Spain, during which Lane acquired paintings for a modern art gallery in Dublin. For Orpen, it was an opportunity to see works of the old masters that he had known only from reproductions, and especially those by Velázquez in the Prado, and it proved influential on his subsequent development. From about 1907, he and Lane shared 8 South Bolton Gardens, Chelsea, when Lane was in London, and it later became Orpen’s studio (though he maintained his house in Royal Hospital Road as the family home).
In acknowledgement of his ability as a portraitist, Orpen was elected, in 1905, to the Society of Portrait Painters (which would be granted the status of a royal society in 1911). In the following year, he was asked to paint the first of a series of portraits of the wealthy American, Evelyn St George, who was married to one of his cousins. In 1908, he and Evelyn began an almost decade long affair, which would prove to be his most significant extra-marital relationship, and affect the course of his art as well of his private life, as she encouraged his ambitions. Around this time, he produced some of his boldest group portraits, including A Bloomsbury Family (1907, National Galleries of Scotland, showing the artist, William Nicholson, with his brood), Homage to Manet (1909, Manchester Art Gallery, showing key members of the NEAC sitting beneath Manet’s portrait of Eva Gonzàles) and the almost caricatural, The Selecting Jury of the New English Art Club (1909, National Portrait Gallery).
Orpen was elected an associate of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1910, and helped to found the National Portrait Society in 1911 (later becoming its President). These were further indicators of his increased recognition as a painter and aids to his developing the most successful and remunerative portrait practice of the time, the successor to that of John Singer Sargent.
In 1916, two years into the First World War, Orpen was appointed an official war artist, and commissioned as a Major. This caused a break with his studio assistant, Séan Keating, who returned to Ireland. In April 1917, he left for France and, from then until 1921, made the war and its outcome his chief subject. In 1918, a solo show of the oils, watercolours and drawings that he had produced of the conflict was held at Thomas Agnew & Sons, under the direction of the Ministry of Information. He presented many of the contents as a gift to the nation, which was accepted by the Imperial War Museum, and this led to his being knighted in June 1918. In 1921, he published his illustrated memoirs of the war, entitled An Onlooker in France 1917-19.
In 1919, Orpen was appointed official artist to the British Peace Delegation, and accompanied it to the Paris Peace Conference in order to portray the delegates. The results included the traditional monumental group portrait, The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28th June 1919 (Imperial War Museums). More controversial was To the Unknown British Soldier in France, which, at the time of its first being exhibited, at the RA in 1923, included two semi-nude soldiers and two cherubs surrounding a union Jack draped coffin. He later painted out the figures and donated it to the Imperial War Museum in memory of his friend, Earl Haig.
In the years following the war, Orpen continued his reputation as a portraitist, and maintained studios at both The Boltons in London and in Paris, the home of his mistress, Yvonne Aubicq. He also became a full Royal Academician (1919), and was elected to the Académies Royales des Beaux-Arts of both Brussels and Antwerp (1919) and to a number of other exhibiting societies, including the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (1919). In 1921, he began his tenure as President of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers. Later honours include his being an honorary member of both the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (1929) and the Royal Hibernian Academy (1930).
In 1923, Orpen was the subject of a monograph by Albert Rutherston (the brother of his brother-in-law, William Rothenstein). In the same year, he became the nominal editor of the illustrated art history, An Outline of Art, and in the following one published his second volume of memoirs, Stories of Old Ireland and Myself.
William Orpen died at 2 Clareville Grove, South Kensington, London, on 29 September 1931. Memorial exhibitions were held at the Royal Academy, in London, and the Knoedler Gallery, in New York.
His work is represented in the Government Art Collection, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Free Hospital and the Royal Institute of British Architects, and numerous public collections, including the Imperial War Museums, National Portrait Gallery, Tate and UCL Art Museum; Leeds Art Gallery; Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums, Glasgow Museums and the National Galleries of Art (Edinburgh); and Mildura Arts Centre (Mildura, VI).
Further reading:
Bruce Arnold, Orpen: Mirror to an Age, London: Jonathan Cape, 1982;
Bruce Arnold, ‘Orpen, Sir William Newenham Montague (1878–1931)’, H C G Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2011, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35331;
Paul G Konody and Sidney Dark, William Orpen: Artist and Man, London: Seeley, Service & Co, 1932;
John Rothenstein, ‘Orpen, Sir William (Newenham Montague), (b Oriel, Blackrock, Co Dublin, Nov 27, 1878; d London, Sept 29, 1931)’, Grove Art Online, 2003,
https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T063956;
Robert Upstone, William Orpen: Politics, Sex and Death, London: Imperial War Museum/Philip Wilson, 2005
