Sir William Orpen, R.W.S., N.E.A.C., R.A., R.H.A.

Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, William Orpen Centenary Exhibition, 1978, no.56 (lent by Major Hamilton)

Hilary Pyle, 'The Hamwood Ladies: Letitia and Eva Hamilton', Irish Arts Review, vol.13, 1997, p.124

Original canvas. The surface is dirty and there are areas of paint separation and craquelure across the work. Ultraviolet light reveals an opaque varnish and old areas of infilling. Held in a gilt plaster frame.
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When John Singer Sargent’s An Interior in Venicewas accepted as his Diploma picture by the Royal Academy in 1901, it confirmed the existence of a new trend – that of the ‘portrait interior’. The concept of showing ‘millionaires surrounded by their millions’ as Joseph Pennell described it, derived from the era of Zoffany, but was revived in the 1890s by Glasgow Boys, like John Lavery. For the young William Orpen, graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art at the end of the decade, and with no respectable studio to which to invite potential sitters, it was more desirable to propose such a strategm. He would go to them rather than have them come to him. In their often lavish drawing rooms, he had the opportunity to demonstrate his ability in characterising the sitter as well as visually cataloguing their possessions. This revealing genre had fallen from favour by the time of the Great War, when the demands on Orpen’s talent were such that he could no longer devote the time to such complex compositions and they were replaced with more standard, cost-effective studio portraits.   

 

Many of the early commissions, particularly in Dublin, came by word of mouth from contacts within Orpen’s circle of friends, family and acquaintances, and this is likely to have been the case with the present Portrait Interior, which is not listed in the artist’s studio book (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin). It shows Mrs Charles Hamilton (1851-1922), born Lousia Caroline Elizabeth Brooke, the daughter of Francis Richard Brooke and the Hon. Henrietta Monck. In September 1874 she married Charles Robert Hamilton (1846-1913), of Hamwood, Dunboyne, Co. Meath, whose Dublin residence, at 40 Lower Dominick Street, provides the setting for the present work. The couple had ten children, the best-known of whom were Eva Henrietta Hamilton (1876-1960) and Letitia Marion Hamilton (1878-1964), both of whom studied under Orpen at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, before moving to the Slade in London. Of the two, Eva ventured into the field of portraiture, copying works by other artists, including Orpen (see Theo Snoddy, Dictionary of 20^th Century Irish Artists, 2002, Dublin, Merlin Publishing, 2^nd ed., p.217). Her portrait of her mother in the same setting should be compared with the present work (fig 1 & 2).

By the time of the sisters’ enrolment in December 1907, the Hamiltons already had a connection with the painter through Louisa’s younger brother, Sir George Frederick Brooke, Bt. (1849-1926) – already an Orpen patron. In 1905 he had commissioned his and his wife, Lady Emily Alma Brooke’s portraits, and in the following two years purchased The Piano and the small version of The Eastern Gown from the painter. It is possible during this period that the present ‘portrait interior’ was painted and left unsigned when the artist was returning to London from one of his regular teaching sessions. Hilary Pyle suggests that Orpen was invited to paint portraits of both Charles Robert Hamilton and Louisa, his wife (“The Hamwood Ladies: Letitia and Eva Hamilton”, Irish Arts Review, Vol. 13, 1997, p. 126), and while it is probably safe to assume that the current picture is one result, no evidence has been found concerning an Orpen portrait of Charles.

 

In the current work, Orpen’s treatment of the interior is looser than that seen in his early portrait and genre interiors, such as the Swinton Family Group Portrait of 1900, or The Mere Fracture 1901 (both Private Collections). This tends to confirm a later date, probably after 1905 and it may well be that the canvas was intended as an oil sketch or possibly a première idée for the uncompleted commission.

We are grateful to the Orpen Research Project for their kind assistance in cataloguing the present work.