William Orpen (1878 - 1931)

William Orpen was the most successful society portrait artist of his day. His portraits of the fashionable, wealthy, and leaders in the military are routinely good, and sometimes great. But that “routine-ness” was to blight his career, and his fashion faded fast after his death.

Orpen was Irish, born in County Dublin to a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Immensely talented as a draughtsman, he moved to London as the century closed to attend the Slade, where he was tutored by Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson Steer. He joined the New English Art Club in 1900, later running his own teaching school with Augustus John, and dividing his time between London and Dublin.

But it was during the war that Orpen made his most recognised contribution as an artist, achieving high rank, which - alongside his influence amongst the well-to-do - meant he could more or less do as he pleased. He drew and painted nearly 150 works which he donated to the state after the hostilities closed, of soldiers dead and alive, formal portraits and informal drawings, landscapes after battle, painted amidst the graves of unnamed soldiers.

Returning to society portraiture after the war, Orpen was very successful. Comparing his average net income per year to its value today, he would be earning anywhere between £1m and £10m per annum today. The boy from Dublin ‘done good.’ But, particularly after his early death at the age of 52, the art world rather turned on Orpen and his reputation was left in ruins. Arguments over commissions, and with fellow artists, lost him friends. He also drank an awful lot, dying in 1931.

I love William Orpen’s work, particularly the dark, rich, creamy portraits of society ladies he painted. He was prodigiously talented. While his military portraits are a valuable record of the contemporary army scene, the generals and majors who fought the war in France in particular, it is those languorous women in furs and floor-length dresses, sporting unfeasibly fashionable hats and jewellery, that work for me. He painted a double portrait of himself and John in The Nell Gwynne Tavern, between London’s Strand and Maiden Lane (the street on which JMW Turner was born). It hasn’t changed much – it was my local drinking den when I worked in Covent Garden. It’s nice to imagine these two old buggers ranting and railing much like the city workers who drink there now.