Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> William Orpen was the last of the great society portrait painters succeeding Sargent and becoming in his turn the most successful artist of his day. He was also the wealthiest earning staggering sums each year from por- trait commissions. Born in Dublin he grew up during the Parnell era and its tensions left an indelible impression of his uncertain roots: cultural loyalty to Ireland political loyalty to Britain ultimate loyalty only to himself. He was an exceptional student first in Dublin then at the Slade carrying off medals and prizes and exploring in early works of great brilliance the impact of teachers and contemporaries among them Walter Osborne Henry Tonks Philip Wilson Steer and Augustus John. A realist enormously hard-working and devoured by an interest in people he set out during the first decade of this century to establish himself as a portrait painter. He did so with an instinctive feeling for character together with warmth and sentiment ‘Not the painting of a man but the painting of a man’s soul’ was how Winston Churchill described his own portrait one of the many great works of Orpen’s maturity. He had a passionate nature. It led to the disruption of his marriage though he did try with uncertain success to keep up the form of it for the sake of his children whom he adored. At one point Orpen was firmly com- mitted to a ravishingly beautiful French mistress his ‘b?b? blonde’ in Paris. He had other love affairs with models. And most remarkable of all was the long and at times scandalous liaison with an American heiress Mrs St George by whom he had a child. More than six foot tall to Orpen’s stocky five foot three she was flamboyant and wilful. (MP)