In Tate Britain
Prints and Drawings Rooms
View by AppointmentBiography
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.
During World War I, he was the most prolific of the official war artists sent by Britain to the Western Front. There he produced drawings and paintings of ordinary soldiers, dead men, and German prisoners of war, as well as portraits of generals and politicians. Most of these works, 138 in all, he donated to the British government and they are now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum. His connections to the senior ranks of the British Army allowed him to stay in France longer than any of the other official war artists, and although he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1918 King's birthday honours list, and also elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, his determination to serve as a war artist cost him both his health and his social standing in Britain.
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.
This biography is from Wikipedia under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License. Spotted a problem? Let us know.
Read full Wikipedia entryArtworks
Sir William Orpen The Mirror
1900
Sir William Orpen Zonnebeke
1918
Sir William Orpen The Model
1911
Sir William Orpen The Angler
c.1912
Sir William Orpen Sir William McCormick
1920
Sir William Orpen Lady Orpen
exhibited 1907
Sir William Orpen Anatomical Study, Male Torso
c.1906
Sir William Orpen Anita
1905
Artist as subject
Sir Max Beerbohm The New English Art Club
1907
Sir Max Beerbohm Bravura: Sir William Orpen
1914
Ben Nicholson OM Copy of a typescript with the heading, ‘William Nicholson’
March 1967
Anita Bartle, Grant Richards (London, UK) This is my Birthday
1902
Henry Scott Tuke Diary of Henry Scott Tuke
12 March 1899–31 December 1905
Features
Tate Etc
Aftermath: Confronting Oblivion
How British, German, Belgian and French artists expressed the psychological fallout of the First World War
Blog
Archives & Access Project: Cracked looking-glass of a servant: Ireland and ‘quite Irish’ art in Tate Archive
Tate Britain is the National Gallery of British Art, with a remit to collect British works of art from around ...
You might like
Augustus John OM
1878–1961
Sir William Rothenstein
1872–1945
Ambrose McEvoy
1877–1927
Harold Gilman
1876–1919
Henry Lamb
1883–1960
Sir Muirhead Bone
1876–1953
David Bomberg
1890–1957
Henry Tonks
1862–1937
Wyndham Lewis
1882–1957
Walter Richard Sickert
1860–1942
John Singer Sargent
1856–1925
Glyn Warren Philpot
1884–1937
Flora Lion
1878–1958
Sir Gerald Kelly
1879–1972
Meredith Frampton
1894–1984