Sir William Orpen
Irish painter. He attended the Metropolitan School of
Art, Dublin (1891–7), and the Slade School of Art, London (1897–9). He became a
friend of Augustus John and joined the New English
Art Club. The influence of
Velázquez, in particular, is apparent in such early genre subjects as The Mirror (1900; London, Tate). His
bravura portrait style was probably also indebted to Manet: hisHomage to Manet (1909;
Manchester, C.A.G.) was a group portrait of members of the New English Art
Club, including Philip Wilson Steer, Walter Richard Sickert, Dugald Sutherland
MacColl and Henry Tonks, sitting beneath Manet's portrait of Eva
Gonzalès(London, N.G.). Orpen was financially one of the most successful,
and eventually one of the most honoured, portrait painters working in Britain
in the twentieth century.
In 1917 Orpen was appointed an Official War Artist. An exhibition of his war paintings, watercolours and drawings was held in London in the spring of 1918.In his
illustrations to An Onlooker in France, 1917–1919 (1921),
Orpen depicted scenes of trench warfare, often in grim detail, but he found it
difficult in his larger paintings to come to terms with the broader
implications of the war. He received a knighthood in June 1918 and was elected
ARA in 1910 and RA in 1921. Orpen's production of paintings and drawings, in
spite of the relative brevity of his life, is impressively large: he worked
quickly and drew almost daily, usually for long hours.
He painted soldiers during WW1.
Field Marshal Haig
His paintings have bold deliberate colours. His paintings of portraits have a direct context when viewed now. When you view his landscapes without any context they still have an eery feel to them. The knowledge they are of battlefields cements the horrible feeling. The landscapes are quite beautiful but with a tone that induces fear.
I quite like his paintings because they are to the point, they don't have any unnecessary flourishes or experimental techniques. They show me clearly when these people and scenes looked like and I can trust his judgement on painting an accurate scene.
No comments:
Post a Comment