Sir William Orpen
1878 - 1931
Place of DeathLondon
Place of BirthStillorgan, County Dublin
BiographyWilliam Orpen stands as one of the most significant Irish artists of the early 20th century. Orpen's importance for Irish art lies not only in his own considerable talent but in the profound influence which he exerted on a generation of Irish artist through his teaching at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. Born in Dublin, Orpen began his formal training at the Dublin Metropolitan School, later moving on to the Slade School of Art, London where he excelled among such peers as Augustus John, Gwen John, Ambrose McAvoy and Spencer Gore. In 1901 he married Grace Knewstub, sister-in-law of his friend William Rothenstein, settled in London and in 1902 opened a teaching atelier with Augustus John. From that year until 1914 he maintained contact with Ireland through a summer teaching post at the Dublin Metropolitan School. To both institutions he brought his eclectic yet highly individual style - a synthesis of the 19th century realist tradition combined with his love for the Old masters, in particular those of the Dutch and Spanish Schools, and his appreciation of the decorative aestheticism of James McNeill Whistler. Though Orpen began by exhibiting with the progressive New English Art Club, the success of his paintings at the more conservative Royal Academy launched his career as a fashionable society portraitist which, through very lucrative, left him with little time to indulge in other subject matter. Yet as his early paintings demonstrate, he drew and painted the nude with great expression and was a master of genre and still-life subject matter. Few artists since Rembrandt have studied their own image with such searching honesty and variety. His lively wit and playful self-mockery are illustrated time and time again in his drawings and letters to friends. As official War artist, for which he was knighted in 1917, Orpen produced haunting, intensely poignant images of the plight of the soldiers on the Somme battlefields of the First World War. After the war, which affected him deeply, he continued his portrait practice until his early death in 1931 at the age of fifty-three. Orpen was elected full Academician of the Royal Hibernian in 1908 but resigned from it seven years later. In 1910 he received a Gold Medal at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh and in 1921 he was elected President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers.
