The Art Of Today

(via The Outline of Art) Frank Rutter writes:

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While the painters mentioned above are far from exhausting the list of distinguished artists who received their training directly from Legros, his successor, Professor Brown, may be said to have been fortunate in having still more brilliant pupils. Of these first attention must be given to William Orpen and Augustus John, who, by common consent, are the most richly gifted of the many ex-students of the Slade School who have attained eminence in their profession.

Now and again in the history of art there are happy individuals who seem to escape the student stage altogether and appear as masters from the first. Lawrence was one; Millais was another; Orpen is a third, and he bids fair to go farther than either of the other two. Born on the 27th November 1878, William Orpen attracted the attention of London connoisseurs while he was still a student at the Dublic Metropolitan School of Art. The writer can remember the sensation caused at South Kensington more than twenty years ago by a drawing from the life with which this young Irishman won the gold medal at the National Competition for works by students at schools of art all over the country. Never before or since has there been so much unanimity of opinion about a prize winner. Everybody was talking then about ‘young Orpen’s’ drawing, for while it satisfied the academic mind by its flawless perfection and anatomical correctness, it roused enthusiasm among more independent critics because it was not a dead thing—as so many prize drawings are—but a real human figure in which every line pulsated with life. It was clear that a great draughtsman had come to town, and when Orpen left Ireland and came to the Slade School his drawings and paintings soon became conspicuous in the exhibitions of the New English Art Club, then held at the old Dudley Gallery in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. In the first decade of the twentieth century this youth in his twenties was already ranked, not with other students, but with artists, like Wilson Steer, who were recognized as masters. What distinguished Orpen at once from other able draughtsmen of his age was his precocious facility in the manipulation of paint. Most students have to learn slowly how to handle pigment; the first paintings Orpen exhibited proved that he had a mastery of the brush. A beautiful example of his early fluency is the picture in the Tate Gallery, entitled ‘The Mirror’, painted in 1900. Even at this period Orpen showed a wide range; he painted portraits, still life, nudes, and subject pictures, while perhaps the most characteristic of these early works were interiors with figures, pictures which seemed to have the fullness of content of a Van Eyck, though painted with the exuberance of a Hals.

In ‘The Mirror’ traces of the influence of Whistler may still be seen; in his later works Orpen’s style has become broader and more vigorous, his color has grown lighter and more brilliant, and in portraits his penetration into character has gained in profundity. But the characterisation was keen in several early portraits, notably the ‘Charles Wertheimer’, the first and only picture the artist exhibited at the Royal Academy prior to his election as Associate in 1910.

Since his entry into the Royal Academy the art of Sir William Orpen has steadily grown in power and public favor, but his phenomenal success has never warped his sincerity as an artist. While he has contributed a generous measure of portraits to the exhibitions of Burlington House, he has remained loyal to the New English Art Club, and there he has again and again shown those inimitable pictures which an artist paints for his own delight and pleasure. Among them may be mentioned some notable scenes of vagrant and peasant life in Ireland, and playful allegories, like ‘Sowing the Seed’, in which a true Irish sense of humor has been blended with pictorial and decorative charm. It is characteristic of Sir William’s independence as an artist that of all the hundreds of portraits which he painted in Paris during and after the Peace Conference, the very best of them should be, not one of the famous statesmen and soldiers who sat to him, but a man who was a nonentity till his portrait was exhibited. The now famous ‘Chef de I’Hôtel Chatham’ was not only the ‘picture of the year’ at the 1921 Academy, it is a picture for all time which has and will have the wide human appeal of Moroni’s ‘Portrait of a Tailor’. In this portrait of the Chef (Mr Chester) in his immaculate white cap and jacket, standing beside his grill, we have Orpen at his very best, using all his amazing facility and dexterity in the handling of paint for the purpose of putting on canvas the rich, full humanity of a living being.

Sir William’s two great Peace picture in the Academy of 1920, ‘Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles,’ and ‘A Peace Conference at the Quai d’Orsay,’ were an expansion of the delightful little interiors which he had sent in earlier days to the New English Art Club, and in a way his allegory ‘Sowing the Seed’ may be regarded as a prelude to the very different and far more serious painting, ‘To the Unknown Soldier’, which was the center of interest in the Academy of 1923. For both these paintings show high powers of imagination, and warn us that in marveling at the quickness of his eye and at the unerring skill of his hand, we must not forget that Sir William Orpen is also an artist with a keenly intelligent brain and with a warm imaginative heart, a man who can see both the humor and tragedy of life, who can feel deeply and can express his emotions either in genial satire or in a majestic allegory of epic grandeur.

The Art Of Today (continued)