In Tate Britain
In Tate Britain
Biography
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; 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.
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Read full Wikipedia entryArtworks
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Sir William Orpen The Mirror
1900 -
Sir William Orpen Zonnebeke
1918 -
Sir William Orpen The Angler
c.1912 -
Sir William Orpen Anatomical Study, Male Torso
c.1906 -
Sir William Orpen Anita
1905 -
Sir William Orpen Sir William McCormick
1920 -
Sir William Orpen The Model
1911 -
Sir William Orpen Dame Madge Kendal
c.1927–8
Artist as subject
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Sir Max Beerbohm The New English Art Club
1907 -
Sir Max Beerbohm Bravura: Sir William Orpen
1914 -
Anita Bartle, Grant Richards (London, UK) This is my Birthday
1902 -
Ben Nicholson OM Copy of a typescript with the heading, ‘William Nicholson’
March 1967 -
Henry Scott Tuke Diary of Henry Scott Tuke
12 March 1899–31 December 1905
Features
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Behind The Scenes
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 …
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Tate Etc
Aftermath: Confronting Oblivion
How British, German, Belgian and French artists expressed the psychological fallout of the First World War
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