William Orpen retrospective opens June 1st
in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Press Release, May 2005

WILLIAM ORPEN: POLITICS, SEX AND DEATH JUNE 1ST - AUGUST 28TH 2005

The most comprehensive retrospective exhibition of the works of William Orpen (1878-1931) to go on show in Dublin, opens in the Millennium Wing of the National Gallery of Ireland on Wednesday, June 1st and will continue until Sunday August 28th, 2005.

The exhibition entitled WILLIAM ORPEN: POLITICS, SEX AND DEATH is organised by the Imperial War Museum in London, and curated by Robert Upstone, Senior Curator of Tate Britain.

Raymond Keaveney, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, said that the last major retrospective exhibition of Orpen's works was held at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin in 1978. That show and the publication of the biography of William Orpen by Bruce Arnold saw the beginnings of a revival of an interest in the artist's work.

The exhibition in the Millennium Wing will include 70 oil paintings drawn from public and private collections in Ireland, Great Britain, France, the USA and Australia. The accompanying catalogue is written by Robert Upstone, with essay contributions by Roy Foster and David Fraser Jenkins (available from the Gallery Shop, price €30).

In curating the show Robert Upstone has brought together the different strands of Orpen's paintings and drawings under three broad categories-politics, sex and death. The exhibition reappraises his career and shows the full variety of his work; his revitalisation of the nude, his spectacular career as the leading social portrait painter of his day to his brutally realistic depictions of the horrors of war as he experienced it as an official war artist in France during the Great War.

Upstone notes that Orpen, though born in Ireland, spent much of his life in England, first as a student and then as one of London's fashionable portraitists and went on to become one of the most successful painters of Edwardian England. He earned extraordinary sums of money and was knighted for his services as a war artist.

In his catalogue essay, 'Orpen and the new Ireland', Roy Foster has written on the artist's ambiguous relationship to a changing Ireland of literary and artistic revival. He says: "Orpen's jaunty, mock-deprecatory style was at odds with the high tone adopted by the revival architects." Towards cultural nationalists in the Yeats circle Orpen's attitude was distinctly cool. Yeats is a constant butt in his memoirs and letters. In his memoirs, Stories of old Ireland, he shows a strong association with the writings of Synge. He was a close friend of Michael Davitt and his assistant in the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin was Sean Keating.

The exhibition in the Millennium Wing will be divided into themes: Imaging Society; Women, Nudes and Bodies; Ireland; Imaging the Self, and War. There will be an Acoustiguide audio-tour available, free with ticket admission. An associated lecture series, 'In the footsteps of Orpen' will take place in the Gallery Lecture Theatre each Sunday and Tuesday throughout the month of June. Guided exhibition tours may be booked through the Education Department (telephone 01-663 3510).

Please note, a complementary exhibition of Orpen's illustrated letters from the collection and war drawings from the Imperial War Museum will be on view in the Print Gallery ['Yours very sincerely, William Orpen', May 21st to August 14th 2005, admission free.]. Also, ARTseARCH database, installed at two kiosks at the entrance to the Print Gallery, will allow visitors to browse through Orpen's 366 letters and sketches in the Gallery's archive.

"WILLIAM ORPEN: POLITICS, SEX AND DEATH"
National Gallery of Ireland, Millennium Wing
June 1st - August 28th 2005
Tickets: €10 & €6 concessions. Thursday special concession: €6 applies to all adult tickets.
An Acoustiguide audio-tour is available free with ticket admission.
Tickets may be purchased directly from the Exhibition Desk in the Millennium Wing or by telephone (01) 663 3513 (no booking fee applies). The exhibition is managed by a timed ticketing system.

Gallery Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday 9:30am-5:30pm; Thursday to 8:30pm; Sunday 12:00pm-5.30pm. Gallery Shop and Restaurant open daily.

For further information, contact: Valerie Keogh
Press & Communications Office
National Gallery of Ireland
Telephone (01) 661 5133
Email press@ngi.ie

A selection of publicity images are available from the Press Office