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

Presented by the Museum, Library and School of Art to G. Coffey Esq. on his retirement from the museum;
Thence by descent to the previous owner;
Pyms Gallery, London, where purchased by the present owner in 1997

London, Pyms Gallery, Life and Landscape, May 1991, no.16, illustrated;
London, Pyms Gallery, An Ireland...imagined, October - November 1993, no.28;
Limerick, The Hunt Museum, Loan Exhibition, 1997-2015

J. Crampton Walker, Irish Life and Landscape, n.d., [c. 1930], Talbot Press, Dublin

The board appears to be sound and the work in good overall condition, ready to hang. Ultraviolet light reveals small flecks of retouching across the sky, and small areas of retouching near the centre of the left, upper and right edges. Also some flecks of retouching in the sea and a small area near the right edge of the sea. Held in a gilt plaster frame.
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Orpen’s annual holidays at Howth Head on the south side of Dublin Bay from 1909 to 1913 were the high point of his year. They were arranged to follow his summer teaching session at the Metropolitan School of Art and they provided a welcome respite before his return to his London studio. Not only could he swim in the cool waters of the bay, but there were frequent hill-top picnics and parties with family, friends and students. One such gathering is celebrated in the splendid Life Class on the Beach, 1910 (fig. 2, sold Sotheby’s 22 May 2014). 

The lounging figure in this drawing resembles the indolent artist in the present work, although he faces in the opposite direction. Further comparisons could be made with the closely related Open-Air Life Class (The Draughtsman and his Model) (1910, Victoria and Albert Museum, London) and the general effect can be compared with the iconic A Summer Afternoon (private collection).

Despite the luxe, calme et volupté of these social occasions, work never ceased. More than once Orpen was captivated by the ever-changing light that falls across this inland sea, momentarily illuminating the busy passage from the Bull lighthouse into Dublin port and Dun Laoghaire harbour. ‘Wonderful and ever-changing’ was how he described the view, rhyming out the names of the Wicklow hills, while fondly recalling the weird sound of the foghorn and the overhead screeching of the Sheerwater gulls (Stories of Old Ireland and Myself, 1924, pp. 4-5). This was a place forever associated with children’s laughter and occasional tears, a place of ‘romance’, the calm waters of which were crossed by numberless fellow-countrymen seeking their fortune – a compelling landscape that matched those of Friedrich, Turner and Courbet in which man, solitary, small and contemplative confronts the elements. Its profound serenity was of course, soon to be shattered by the events of the First World War and the 1916 Easter Rising. 

Professor Kenneth McConkey