Sir Max Beerbohm

Catalogue entry

N06043 BRAVURA. SIR WILLIAM ORPEN 1914
 
Inscr. ‘Bravura. Mr. Orpen trying whether it wouldn't be possible to paint, for the Uffizi, one mirror's reflection of another's reflection of a soap-bubble's reflection of himself. May 1914’ t.l.
Pencil and watercolour, 15 1/2×11 1/8 (39·5×28·25).
Presented by Simon Nowell Smith 1952.
Coll: Leicester Galleries, 1921, bought by Charles Rutherston (d. 1926);...; Frank Hollings, bought at Sotheby's c. 1930–5; Simon Nowell Smith.
Exh: Leicester Galleries, May 1921 (53).

The reference is to the gallery of self-portraits in the Uffizi, Florence, though Beerbohm has anticipated by some ten years Orpen's gift to that gallery of a self-portrait painted in 1925. For a picture in which Orpen uses the effect of a reflection in a mirror see 'The Mirror' in the Tate Gallery (N02940).

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I

Read more