WILLIAM ORPEN
LEFT William Orpen,
Homage to Manet,
1909, oil on canvas,
162.9x120cmportrait Le Chef de l’Hôtel Chatham,
Paris, smoothly painted with barely
visible brushstrokes. The heat of the
grill room is connoted in the grill-chef
Eugène Grossrieter’s perspiring face
and reddened cheeks, complemented
by the stiff toque blanche on his
head. The arms-akimbo stance draws
attention to his starched jacket and
neckerchief, all executed in rich
shades of white, revealing Orpen’s
superb mastery of tonal painting.
Reviewers of the work likened his
deft handling of paint pigments to the
chef’s skilled use of fine ingredients.
Orpen’s signature small fleck of white
catches the chef’s left eye, animating
his face. In the work there are echoes
of Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère,
not only in the style of painting, using
foreshortening and low perspective
but inclusion of a bottle of stout in
the left corner, and depiction of
a restaurant worker in the grand
manner. Other possible references
are the still-life paintings of Jean-
Baptiste Chardin, so admired by
Orpen that he painted Self-portrait as
Chardin in 1908 – celebrated too in
the rich, pearly fat of the raw meat
chops lying in front of the chef.
The stance of Grossrieter’s body
reflects Orpen’s close study of the
human figure, and its inner muscles.
Robinson states that Orpen’s
knowledge of the human body, which
underpins this work, goes back to the
life drawing classes given by Henry
Tonks, a doctor and tutor at the Slade.
Life drawing was not a feature of
the teaching at Orpen’s first school,
the Metropolitan School of Art in
Dublin, which he thought was a great
omission. He later returned to the
Metropolitan to introduce life classes,
for which he created large chalk-on-
paper anatomical works to pin on the
wall as a teaching aid. The muscular
Anatomical Study, Male Torso,
now part of the Tate collection and
featured in Method & Mastery,
is one. According to Robinson, Orpen
imported models from London to
pose nude for the life-drawing classes
at the Metropolitan, as Irish models
were not allowed to pose naked.
London-based Orpen’s last studio
was on South Bolton Gardens, South
Kensington. Its high ceilings and wide
windows flooded the vast interior
space with light. A ceiling fitting –
a large ball of clear glass known as
a “Witch’s Ball” – created reflections
of all sides of the room, which Orpen
could utilise. It was illustrated in the
20 September 1930 edition of
Country Life magazine in a six-page
feature on his studio published a year
before he died. Within this vast
first-floor room, Orpen had created an
elegant setting for his rich clients to
relax while being painted, but more so
for himself, as a perfect space to paint.
William Orpen: Method & Mastery runs
until 23 February 2020 at Watts Gallery,
Surrey. http://www.wattsgallery.org.ukMANCHESTER ART GALLERY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGESArtists & Illustrators 31