Sir William Orpen

Born in Stillorgan, Ireland, Orpen studied at the Dublin Municipal School of Art (1892/6), and then at the Slade where his precocious ability won him a brilliant reputation. 'When I was at the Slade it was a one man show', recalled a fellow student, 'That man was Orpen.' A gifted draughtsman, Orpen worked extremely hard, carefully studying everything from old master, to Assyrian reliefs, with an exuberance that manifests itself in all his early works. Having left the Slade, Orpen turned to portrait painting, his subjects including the most famous figures of his generation. Orpen's industry was prestigious and his wealth even more so, his artistic success in Britain recalling that of the portrait painters Van Dyck, Lawrence and Sargent. During the First World War, Orpen , an Official War Artist, produced innumerable paintings of generals and statesmen, and he was the principal British painter at the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919. Knighted in the previous year, Orpen was made a member of the Royal Academy, and presented a large collection of his war paintings to the Imperial War Museum.

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