WILLIAM ORPEN
ROSALINDORMISTONlooks attheevolving
painttechniquesofthisearly20th-century
BritishmasterofportraitsandstudiointeriorsABOVEWilliam
Orpen,TheStudio,
1910,oilon
canvas,96.5x80cmLEFTWilliamOrpen,
Anita,1905,oilon
canvas,76x55.7cmWilliam
Orpen
ART HISTORYA
century ago, William Orpen
was the highest-paid portrait
painter in Britain. Born into
a Protestant-Irish family in Stillorgan,
County Dublin in 1878, he had
studied art at Dublin’s Metropolitan
School of Art and the Slade School of
Art, London. He was knighted for his
work as an official war artist duringthe First World War and he duly
became President of the Royal
Society of Portrait Painters in 1924.
Since his death in 1931, Orpen’s
visibility in Britain has been low but a
new exhibition at the Watts Gallery in
Surrey is set to change that. William
Orpen: Method & Mastery focuses on
his early-to-late portraits and the onething most artists want to know
about: his painting techniques.
Watts Gallery painting conservator
Sally Marriott recognised that there
was very little technical knowledge of
Orpen’s work so she has analysed his
works using x-rays, reflectography and
paint sampling. Her results, revealed
in the exhibition and accompanying
catalogue, were surprising. Although
there was nothing unusual found in
Orpen’s use of pigments, his
technique was different. He often
painted directly on to the canvas
without an underdrawing. On the
rare occasions there was one, it was
usually created from palette
scrapings. In addition, some early
canvases were extended in length,
width or both, with strips of canvas
tacked on during the painting process.
This approach can be seen in
particular in works such as 1905’s
Anita, an experimental portrait of the
Dublin writer Anita Bartle that was
painted on cheaper, student-grade
canvas. It was informed by Flemish
artist Peter Paul Rubens, whose work
Orpen had seen in the Museo Nacional
del Prado, Madrid. Orpen wanted to
try painting directly on to the canvas,
using a Rubens-style palette of red,
black and white. His brushstrokes are
visible – he used both hogs’ hair and
sable brushes – with up to ten layers,
each left to dry. Later works were
painted wet-on-wet and blended in.
Technical examination by Sally
Marriott shows that at a later date,
possibly when Orpen gave Anita as a
wedding present to the sitter, he dug
into the canvas, deeply gouging out
paint from the underground withLEEDS ART GALLERY, LEEDS MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES/TATE
Artists & Illustrators 29