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Lot Essay
Bruce Arnold (loc. cit.) describes this work as 'an early canvas painted in the winter of 1898-99 and depicts himself, Augustus John and Albert Rothenstein [later Rutherston] standing in front of the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus. John is on the left in profile, looking remarkably virile and handsome. He wears a top hat and his gloved hand is holding a walking stick under his arm. On the right is the diminutive figure of Albert Rothenstein, also in profile wearing a bowler hat and appearing to be in attendance on his more senior colleagues. In the centre is Orpen the angular ugliness of his face greatly exaggerated, his mouth hanging half-open, as if to suggest a veritable clown in that circus in which they can be presumed to have been pursuing their night-time revels. The artist points a quixotic finger at his own breast'.
It was Albert's brother William who called this trio 'The Three Musketeers', and the present work may represent a night out together to celebrate Albert's seventeenth birthday on 5 December 1898. They had met at the Slade School where Orpen and John were the acknowledged geniuses of the day. The following summer they all fell in love with Grace Knewstub, the younger sister of William Rothenstein's wife, Alice, whom Orpen eventually married in August 1901.
It was Albert's brother William who called this trio 'The Three Musketeers', and the present work may represent a night out together to celebrate Albert's seventeenth birthday on 5 December 1898. They had met at the Slade School where Orpen and John were the acknowledged geniuses of the day. The following summer they all fell in love with Grace Knewstub, the younger sister of William Rothenstein's wife, Alice, whom Orpen eventually married in August 1901.