These pictures are painted in a new manner-in the artist’s “war” manner – very broadly, very rapidly, sometimes very summarily, perhaps thinly. The owner believed it to be a copy of an original in the Imperial War Museum. Sir William Orpen 1918. The full text of the article is here →, UCL Slade School of Fine Art (University College London), London, UK, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Orpen. This is a part of the Wikipedia article used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA).

[3], He was deeply affected by the suffering he witnessed in the war and his To the Unknown British Soldier Killed in France first exhibited in 1923 showed a flag draped coffin flanked by a pair of ghostly and wretched soldiers clothed only in tattered blankets. Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, (27 November 1878 – 29 September 1931) was an Irish artist who worked mainly in London.Orpen was a fine draughtsman and a popular, commercially successful, painter of portraits for the well-to-do in Edwardian society, though many of his most striking paintings are self-portraits. He has found, not sixty innumerable different subjects. Although widely admired by the public, this picture was attacked by the press and Orpen painted out the soldiers before the painting, which had originally been dedicated to Field Marshal Haig, was accepted by the Imperial War Museum in 1927.[4]. Orpen depicted the 'Arnolfini' convex glass in several other paintings, including A Mere Fracture in 1901, during this period. Both his parents were amateur painters, and his eldest brother, Richard Caulfield Orpen, became a notable architect.

Lord Beaverbrook at the opening of Orpen’s exhibition at Agnew’s Galleries. A soldier who was watching Major Orpen hanging his official war paintings at the Agnew Galleries in readiness for the opening of his one-man show, by Lord Beaverbrook, the Minister of Information, on Thursday next, [23rd May 1918], said. The marriage was not happy, and the painter eventually ran off with one of his sitters, Madame Saint-George, a wealthy young married woman whom he painted around 1912. He would include mirrors in his pictures to create images within images, add false frames and collages around his subjects and often make pictorial references to works by other artists in his own paintings. His two metre wide painting, The Play Scene from Hamlet won the Slade composition prize in 1899. His pictures explain themselves in their own wordless language far better than any words can explain them. There is not a detail wrong. To write an Introduction to the pictures of William Orpen is more than a work of supererogation; it is a piece of confounded cheek. But imagination, sympathy, and anything like genuine emotion are precisely the elements which in this show I find wanting. Here is a small selection of the 125 paintings and drawings by William Orpen at the Agnew’s exhibition: –. According to Bruce Arnold, writing in Irish Art a Concise History: As noted by his biographer, H. L. Wellington, in referring to the portrait of Lily Carstairs which formed part of the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1915,[5]. McConkey, Kenneth (15 January 2005). William Orpen: Method & Mastery - Reviews by pupils from Guildford County and Rodborough School.
So that we are obliged to limit the axiom a little and say: “War is monotonous – for all men except William Orpen”. In short, I do not know why I am writing this introduction-or rather, I do know. Kenneth McConkey tackles this view in commemoration of the centenary of the Great War.. Two ‘Orpsie Boy’ Self Portraits by Sir William Orpen. I am writing in under command, in an epoch when the general duty is to obey. “Dead German in a Trench,” which strains at the horrible, does not suggest it. He has the imaginative sympathy from which genuine emotion springs; and he has the eye, the brain, the hand. Fortunate are they-and I count myself among them in the present instance-to whom obedience is a pleasure. Most of these works, 138 in all, he gave to the British government on the understanding that they should be framed in simple white frames and kept together as a single body of work.

I ought to remark, in passing, that even William Orpen could scarcely have accomplished what he has accomplished, in the brief period and in the difficult conditions imposed, if he had not apparently invented a special technique for the purpose. Orpen was a naturally talented painter and was enrolled, six weeks before his thirteenth birthday, at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. This is especially true of the figure-paintings. I am sure in the hearts of every one of us there is a real, a deep, and a lasting debt of gratitude and obligation to Major Orpen”. It is true that Mr. Arnold Bennett, in a preface to the catalogue of Mr. Orpen’s paintings and drawings on the Western front, at Messrs Agnew’s, speaks of the imaginative sympathy from which their genuine emotion springs. In the early spring of 1916, the removal men arrived at William Orpen’s ‘Oriel’ studio in South Kensington and packed up Nude Pattern: The Holy Well to take it to the forthcoming New English Art Club exhibition. “The Falling Bomb” in its manner gives opportunity for the relief of humour, but does not seize it. The family lived at Oriel, a large house with extensive grounds containing stables and a tennis court. His ingenuity in manipulating the material is simply endless, and yet he is never tempted to falsify the material. Born in Stillorgan, County Dublin, William Orpen was the youngest son of Arthur Herbert Orpen (1830-1926), a solicitor, and his wife, Anne St.George (1834-1912), eldest daughter of the Right Rev. The Somme – A Clear Day; View From The British Trenches Opposite La Boisselle, Showing The German Front Line And Mine Craters 1917 by William Orpen. His large paintings of the Versailles Peace Conference captured the political wranglings and the vainglory of the gathered politicians and statesmen, whom Orpen came to loathe but relied upon for post-war commissions. Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, KBE, RA, RHA (27 November 1878 – 29 September 1931) was an Irish portrait painter, who worked mainly in London. The exhibition later went to Manchester City Art Gallery for 6 weeks. The papers also relate to the Orpen exhibition at Agnew's, and the painting 'Some members of the Allied Press Camp' (IWM:ART 2971). This is a part of the Wikipedia article used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). War is monotonous. For his war work, he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the 1918 King's birthday honours list. The pictures, 125 in number, re­presented two years’ work under thrilling war conditions, and in declaring the exhibition open the Minister of Information paid tribute to Mr. Orpen’s versatility and genius. “A Grave ina Trench” is merely melodramatic.

After his early death, a number of critics, including other artists, were loudly dismissive of his work and for many years his paintings were rarely exhibited, a situation that only began to change in the 1980s.