ORIGINAL ARTIST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23083, 8 January 1937, Page 12

ORIGINAL ARTIST

SIR WILLIAM pRiPJEN I;';., A TREMENDOUS WORKER:, SKETCH OF HIS CAREER If ever a school of art found fatfotir,-. able publicity in the number ofidisf ""' tinguished artists it turned out ii* ; is*- : - surely the Slade School, established '•' in connection with the University College, London. This famous school (says a writer in the Melbourne Age). owes its origin to Felix Slade, a „ wealthy collector, who died-in 1868, and whose public spirit was further; demonstrated by the gift of a: fine rcpl?., ! lection of old glass, engravings, and !.' other works of art to the' British"". Museum. Unlike Strang and Augustus John, Orpen did not start as a Slade student. When 13 years of age he joined the Metropolitan School of Art in /Dublin, his native city, and from there he passed on well equipped in the fundamentals of his art to London. Frank Rutter, in his book, "Some. - Contemporary Artists," says that in the;*" beginning of the present century there * used to be each year at South Ken- ; sington a great summer exhibition,, open to'students in art schools through- % out the country. Prizes and medals ? f were given, but the proceedings werej'; usually' marked by a uniform respectable dullness, and the awarding of the prizes was invariably the subject of adverse comment by outside critics and observers. " One year, however," he says, "there was found to -be an.—. unprecedented unanimity concerning one prize awarded." This was the gold medal given for a drawing from life sent over from Dublin by young William Orpen. It was the boy's first appearance in public, but from then •.- till the time of his death he never appears, artistically speaking, to have looked back. , i DISTINCTIVE WORK. When he left Dublin, and began his course as a pupil at Sladej his work was at once accepted as beihgsomething distinctive > and, individual.; I&& bore no sign' of the prolixitycommon-, to the progress of most-young».art" students of that time, \ arid it is_iaid: that some of the teachers, through whole hands he passed in those stages, while admitting his unusual brilliancy, were inclined tdNddubt whether the young Irishman's gifts were of the enduring kind which would carry him to the end. But while in schools he found conditions which lent themselves to progress and congenial society, it is": questionable whether teaching ever, meant a-.great deal to him. "<■■ ' "l; His advancement was largely a personal matter, and his standing at, the new English Art Club, then located at the old Dudley Gallery in Picadilly, was one of equality with painters much his senior in years. When one considers that such,a-pic-ture as "The Mirror" was painted in . 1900, when the artist was only 22, it becomes evident that, together with the gift of facility he possessed also that power of sustained observation which redeems even his earliest known work from any suspicion of. that surface charm which has so often proved the bane of budding promise. . SHORT OF THE ULTIMATE "■ Born in 1878, it cannot be said that, even taking into account his almost phenomenal capacity for work and later brilliant.successes, that in the 53 years of his life he reached theV full limit of the power that was in'him, and granted another 10. yeairs it is more than probable that the world would have been the "richer for the realisation of a new field of inspiration in the art of William Orpen. Once launched, it was inevitable that much" - of his time should be given to portraiture, and as he was born into a period in English art for which Sargent, and, in a lesser degree, de Laszlo were dominating influences, his work as it began to'appear on the Walls of the Academy naturally challenged comparison, and observers. were not wanting who forecast for him a greater career than either of those, though his more wayward temperament insistently drew him from the lure of the fashionable sitter to follow his own aesthetic bent as a. thinker and idealist. While the traditional manner in portrait painting was tohave either a plain or' artificially made up background behind the figure, the innate inventiveness of this artist led him to adopt a- new method, in which the subject was represented in the natural atmosphere of a living j;oom, and this he invariably managed with such judgment as to preserve perfectly the balance of adjustment between the sitter and his surrounding. A characteristic/instance of this was "A Bloomsbury Family," entailing six figures seated round a dinner table, exhibited in the Loan Collection of Contemporary British Art, held at the Melbourne Gallery ;ih 1935, where was also shown his fine' " Interior at 25 Park Lane, London," with Sir Philip Sassoon and the Marchioness pf Cholmondeley... The interior was not of necessity a. habit with him, for he had no habit in art, except that of always painting his best, and sometimes he modified his backgrounds to a piece of delicately painted still life, as in " The Chinese Shawl," but in such outstanding works as his portraits of Gordon Selfridge, Dame Madge Kendall, and Lloyd George hung in the 1928 Academy, the normal background .■„ was reverted to. * .-. ./■,■.,.«.,

Even a slight resume of the lif6'and work of Sir William Orpen'"would hardly be complete without some ■ reference to his most cryptic; picture, "Sowing New Seed," acquired by the Adelaide Gallery in 1914, arid which, now in the possession of a private collector, was lent to the memorial exhibition. It is an allegorical composition, and as such is open to misconception as regards its symbolic and latent significance.

In reply to a cry for enlightenment from, Adelaide, Orpen, writing from Dublin, explained that the blackhatted figure on the right 'represented the Board of Agriculture and Technical Instruction in Ireland, which has control of money for. and the management of, art in Ireland. The nude figure sowing the seed represented himself, or any other unfortunate, trying to introduce more modern movement or fresher life into the schools under the board. The lady leaning on the "department's ' arm is the very ordinary departmental wife, who understands nothing, and wishes to be on the* safe side. The decayed tree is the department, and the magpie is—bad luck to it—a bitter cry from a patriotic Irishman " agin the Government," which, it is to be hoped, had results. Perhaps the most famous work he ever produced is "Chef de l'Hotel Chatham," which was the sensation at the 1921 academy. It is a demonstration not only of his art at its .best, but of his proletarianism. The. chef was a noted artist where chops were concerned, and, as Rutter suggests, Orpen may have painted him as a mark of his appreciation of their succulency., Anyhow, it was a case of fifty-fifty, for the cook, when he found how famous the portrait had become, registered a conviction that he had "made Orpen." The painter was. appointed an official artist during the World War. He worked strenuously, most of the things produced being now in the British Imperial War Museum, but a few good examples have found their way out here, and are to be seen in the present Melbourne Exhibition. The artist was made K.B.E. in 1918, and elected >Royal Academician in the following year. In addition to the arduous ousiness of painting he found time to write his first essay, being the "Onlooker in France." published in 1921, and illustrated with reproductions of his own pictures, and in 1924 came "Stories of Old Ireland" and "Myself." Early in the artist's career it was predicted that he would be one day " president of the Royal Academy," but unfortunately for the R.A. the prophecy did not find fulfilment.