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

Bequeathed upon the sitter's death to her sister Jane;
Christie's, 5 March 1987, lot 117;
Christie's, 22 May 1998, lot 29;
Private collection

The Artist's Studio Book, 28-15/1915;
Cara Copland Reference: L03:11;
Laib Glass Negative Number: 8154;
P.G. Konody & S. Dark, Sir William Orpen: Artist and Man, 1932, p.270, illustrated pl.6;
Bruce Arnold, Mirror to an Age, 1981, p.298

The canvas has been lined. There is a faint stretcher bar mark down the left vertical edge otherwise the work appears in very good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals some flecks of retouching along the edges and in some places to the above mentioned stretcher bar mark. Some small areas to her white dress and two small areas located near the bottom of her blue gown on the right hand side. Held in a gilt plaster frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The student of personality, temperament, demeanour and style, it was Orpen’s ‘business’ to read the mind’s construction in the faces of his sitters. He recognized instantly that the way someone stood, sat or reclined was unique and that tiny movements of a head, hand or foot can be revelatory. Belief in the acuity of observation was his central tenet and the search for the expressive potential of other human beings was the goal of his finest portraits – to the point that some sitters found his inquiring gaze uncomfortable. As Sidney Dark triumphantly remarked, ‘Orpen lived in the Palace of Truth’, and there were no compromises in the studio at South Bolton Gardens (Konody & Dark, p. 89). For him the task of portrait painting was no simple exercise in flattery or ego inflation, and he could read instantly the character of a sitter from his or her first introduction – if they were wearing the right clothes, if they were extrovert, intellectual or aristocrat, he could immediately discern the quality of personality.

It is this scrutiny that makes the portrait of Mrs Oscar Lewisohn such a compelling study. Painted in 1915 when the Lewisohns were about to close their house at Cranborne Court near Windsor and return to New York, the picture represents one of the stars of the Edwardian stage. Born Edna May Pettie in 1878 in Syracuse, New York, the daughter of a postman, she became a child actor at the age of five and by seven was performing in the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. In 1895 she moved to New York to study at the city’s conservatoire, making her stage début in 1896. The following year she was offered the leading role of Violet Grey in the musical comedy, The Belle of New York. This is the story of a Salvation Army girl who discovers that she has been named as sole beneficiary of a millionaire whose spendthrift son she has recently ‘saved’. She ultimately succeeds in persuading the father to restore his son’s fortune but at the same time, falls in love with her convert and the play ends happily - with the marriage of wealth to the higher values of Christianity. After a muted reception on Broadway in 1897, the show transferred to the Shaftesbury Theatre, London where, despite all predictions, it became an astonishing success, running to 697 performances, and elevating Edna to immediate stardom. It is thought to have provided the inspiration for George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara (1905) and in celebration of her success, Edna was portrayed in costume by Orpen’s compatriot, John Lavery, in 1907 (Edna May in ‘The Belle of New York’, sold Sotheby’s 29 March 2011, lot 12).

By this point she was divorced from her first husband and, widely-acclaimed for her beauty, was being courted by Indian royalty. She finally married the dashing Oscar Lewisohn, a New York banker in London on 4 June 1907 and retired from the stage. It was widely reported that after hearing the news of her retirement, several young male admirers unhitched the horses from Edna’s carriage and pulled it from the Aldwych Theatre to the Ritz Hotel where she was dining. Celebrity nevertheless did not tarnish this devoted couple and during the ten years of their marriage Edna would occasionally appear in charity ‘masques’ with other luminaries of London society. She outlived her husband by over thirty years, returning after the Great War to a suite in the Ritz. She died at Lausanne on 1 January 1948.

It was this radiant performer who appeared at Orpen’s studio in the middle of the first year of the Great War. During the year he would paint the two other superb full-length portraits of Madame Eugenia Errazuriz (1915, Mildura Arts Centre, Victoria, Australia and Lady Idina Wallace (sold Sotheby’s, 19 November 2013, lot 90), in which, as here, the sitter is strikingly posed on a dramatic chequerboard floor against a lamp black background.

Orpen reserved such occasions for some of his most distinguished portraits. He, more than any of his contemporaries, had realized early in his career that the grand manner full-length of Whistler, Sargent and Lavery was falling from fashion, and while he retained his respect for Manet and Velazquez, he tended, in portraits of women, to favour the half-length. The return to the full-length was signalled with his magisterial portrayal of Mrs St George in 1912 (sold Sotheby’s, 16 May 2003, lot 57) – but this, for its time, was exceptional. 

In the pictures of 1915 he re-invested the format with modernity, not just in the dress styles which in the present instance imitates the freedom of the Greeks – but in his crisp and confident handling, that emphasises, above all, the silhouette.  None of this brio is however, permitted to reduce the psychological depth of an elegant American whose formidable talents were celebrated by all. This was the charismatic ‘Edna May’, the original ‘belle of New York’. 

We are grateful to Chris Pearson of the Orpen Research Project for his assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.