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拍品專文
'This fine character drawing is a preliminary study for one of the characters in the second of Orpen's three large allegorical paintings, the lost work The Western Wedding (1914, see below). Believed sold to Marquis Kojiro Matsukata of Japan in 1918, it was originally intended for a new 'Kyoraku Museum of Art' (Sheer Pleasure Arts Pavillion), originally to be located in Kobe, then Tokyo. Unfortunately Marquis Matsukata got into financial difficulties and the project was never completed, so his collection had to be broken up and sold off, and now all trace of the picture has been lost, believed destroyed. This and other similar studies, along with black and white photographs, are all that we have as a gauge to this important work. Unfortunately, most of the studies remain untraced, although there is one entitled Two Figures of a Man and a Woman on Horseback in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.
Orpen sometimes would note the name and address of the model on the preliminary sketches for The Western Wedding and The Holy Well (1916, National Gallery of Ireland), as he has apparently done in this case, with the annotation 'Address O. Wright Esq Abbey Theatre Dublin'. Although no trace has been found of an 'O. Wright' being connected with the Abbey Theatre, there was a 'U. Wright' and it is possible that this is the person to whom Orpen was referrring - the letter 'U' being badly formed. Udolphous Wright, more familiarly known as 'Dossie' was connected with the Abbey Theatre from the early days (circa 1903) and his assocation continued for about fifty years. He was an electrician by trade, and his principal role at the Abbey was that of chief electrician. However, he turned his hands to most things and other roles included, at one time or another, Management Committee Member, minor part player, Theatre Manager, Stage Manager and play director. He was certainly still acting in minor parts in plays at about the time Orpen was visiting Dublin, when no doubt the latter would have taken the opportunity to visit the Abbey. For instance Wright appears in the cast list for Synge's Playboy of the Western World (1907), the notorious and riotous opening night of which Orpen attended. If it is Udolphous being depicted (1), he must be in character. Although his name does not appear in any of the cast lists for plays performed during the summer of 1914, when Orpen was working on The Western Wedding, he may have appeared as part of 'The Crowd' in A Minute's Wait, a one act farce by Martin J. McHugh, which opened 27 August 1914. Joseph Holloway describes his impressions of the play thus: 'The dressing and playing of some of the characters were bordering on the stage-Irishman type ... Like in Jack B. Yeats's pictures, a convention is rapidly creeping into Abbey plays, and all the characters are attired as tramps or such-like, instead of attired as in nature we fine them' (2). Orpen's character figure with kit-bag by his feet and glass by his side, fits the bill, and could well have come straight out of this play.
Orpen may have also noted these stereotypical characterisations being employed by the Abbey Theatre at that time and introduced similar figures as a parody into his own composition. Just as he may have done in the watercolour Sheep and Goats (private collection) (3). Certainly The Western Wedding seems to be full of stereotypes, and Orpen would have relished the added irony of including an actual Abbey Theatre Company member in the composition.
Thus, with the annotation, Orpen does establish a connection with the Abbey Theatre. The Theatre provided a showcase for Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats and John Millington Synge - individuals at the heart of the Celtic Revival Movement. Orpen would have seen a number of the productions over the years, penned both by these and other lesser known authors, and these plays about Irish folk may well have had some influence on his Irish allegorical works. These works do not appear to relate to any individual productions, many of which were fairly minor. It is rather that Orpen was parodying the general atmosphere exemplified by such productions, probably considering most of them two-dimensional, with the exception of those by one Abbey playwright, John Synge, whom he truly respected. In Stories of Old Ireland and Myself Orpen describes Synge thus: 'Then the Abbey Theatre started, and John Synge wrote wonderful plays and books. He knew Ireland, the humour, the sadness of it all, better than anyone ever did. And he expressed his knowledge of his works in words that burn deep into the heart of all who know and love the country. What a master he was, this calm, modest, shy, great man! Alas! he is dead, and there is no one who can fill his place'. Synge, however, had died in 1909. Orpen realised that, like himself, Synge did not take himself too seriously, seeing within the Celtic Revival ironic contrasts; contrasts which litter, and were used to great effect in his plays, and which suggest a somewhat ambivalent commitment to the cause. In this respect Orpen's work may be considered in the guise of a clever pastiche, using this type of approach together with such titles from Synge's plays as The Tinker's Wedding (circa 1904) (4) and The Well of Saints (1905), to suggest the themes and style, if not the content, for The Western Wedding and Nude Pattern: The Holy Well respectively. However, the origins of the first of the three Irish fantasies, Sowing New Seed for the Board of Agriculture and Technical instruction for Ireland (1913, Mildura Arts Centre, Australia), has its origns elsewhere, being more specifically a comment on art teaching in Ireland rather than the more general observations of the Irish character which characterizes the two later works (5). Bruce Arnold quotes a letter from Orpen to John Lavery from France about his feelings about art in Ireland (6), but in this context demostrates his high regard for John Synge: 'Some day soon big things will happen there in the art world - but it must not be forced - they must find their own legs and they have not been on them in ½ a century - except John Synge - I feel sure that the worst thing we can do for them at the moment is help them. But in a few years things will be different. Please do not think I was ever treated badly in Dublin. I love the place and love the people, even that great (?) one Dermod O'B 'The Master of those who do not know'. Oh yes we'll come to our place soon. But we must get a bit modest first ... I think for the moment we want treating as the gentlemen over here tell you to treat the ladies 'treat 'em rough'. It's cruel work - but one must be cruel to be kind (sometimes).'
The picture itself is far too complex and worked on too many levels to fully analyse here, and is open to many interpretations. Arnold (7), for instance, considers it along with the other two pictures in the 'Irish trilogy' in the context of the Irish nation's search for identity. In all spheres Irish, whether it be the landscape itself, faith, dress, manner, culture and sexuality, as it moves with unstoppable force ever closer to independence like the ice at the end of a glacier just before it breaks off into the sea. P.G. Konody (8), on the other hand, considers the work 'Quite isolated among these pictures, though closely allied in spirit, subject, manner of treatment and use of the marble medium to the Nude Pattern - Holy Well, Ireland', and sees the whole composition more in terms of affluence or plenty contrasted with hardship or famine; the former represented by the 'corpulent farmer' on horseback and the Rolls Royce, 'a grey motor-car strikes a somewhat incongruous note of luxury in this scene of very humble rustic life in a remote and neglected district' and the latter by the landscape itself, 'sad, barren, stoney scenery.' Of the other individuals, he describes the bride and groom as 'plain country folk' and the three women as 'witnesses'.
As has already been suggested The Western Wedding is full of Irish stereotypes. However their use and inclusion by Orpen is almost certainly deliberate. There are certain indications that lead to this conclusion. For instance the two-dimensional nature of the stereotype is reflected in the medium Orpen used, which gave the composition a flat appearance, much like tempera would do. It had been recently developed by Windsor and Newton and was known as 'Marble Medium'. Orpen used it for all three of his major Irish allegorical works, in which (especially in the last two) both the figures and landscape were fused into a single compositional pattern. As Konody (9) comments: 'All this wealth of incident is put together with considerable skill, but in rather bizarre fashion, with more than a touch of caricature in the characterization of the Western types, and with probably intentional disregard of the pictorial planes, which results in a certain sense of confusion, the landscape features being, as it were, forced into the foreground, so that the general effect of the picture is as of a flat pattern, or a Persian miniature.'
Another indication is the presence of the Rolls Royce, which, with a certain inevitability seems to have the adjective incongruous attached to it. I cannot disagree with those who have described the presence thus, but I believe its inclusion is more than a whim on Orpen's part to record, show off and celebrate the acquisition of his new pride and joy, or, as a 'luxury' foil for hard life implied by many features in the work, as Konody suggests. From the historical point of view its inclusion is significant because it allows the work to be dated fairly accurately, for he only took delivery of the vehicle at the end of July 1914, and the work was exhibited at the Winter 1914, New English Art Club exhibition, and so must have been completed by the November of that year. That aside, Orpen almost certainly had other reasons for its inclusion. There is no doubt that he strongly identified with it, and it could well be a symbolic representation of himself, for it is a representation of his own Rolls Royce right down to the inclusion of his vehicle's registration number, 'R-2101'. It is obviously a humorous touch, but the humour is profound in that Orpen could be saying, 'this view of Ireland is not real - it is not really what I think - it is what others think - or what they would like us to think - it is a joke, a parody'. The strength of the composition, itself, suggests there are also more serious and deeper messages contained within it. Konody certainly thought so: 'The picture is apt to leave a first impression of being painted in a mood of bantering flippancy, but the very serious and exquisitely wrought studies for two groups in the picture suffice to dispel this notion and to establish the sincerity of the effort.'
Perhaps Orpen is commenting on how Ireland sees itself, or certain movements in Ireland such as the Revivalists see Erin, or how they would like Erin to be seen. Consider, for instance, the haughty man on horseback clutching his book of Celtic lore, showing his handiwork to the female figure representative of 'Young Ireland' sat uncomfortably behind him on the horse. Whether he be the Squire, or, as Arnold (10) suggests, the matchmaker, he appears to be master of all that he surveys. But in Orpen's eyes it is a view or a vision that is not realistic. As the history of Pre-Raphaelites demonstrated, living in the past will never prove to be a practical option in the long run. Progress, in the guise of the Rolls Royce, cannot be ignored, and will inevitably and irrevocably intrude on this idyll. This could also help to explain why Orpen's technique contrasts so completely from the realism which more normally characterizes his approach, and for which he is more widely known.
On another level, Orpen seems to be setting tensions between the various figure elements in the work, contrasting the various groups and individuals. What each element represents is subject to conjecture, and may well be symbolic of more than one concept. Again, taking as an example the man on horseback, he may also represent the temporal aspect of Irish life which in turn is used as a device to offset the spiritual aspects, one of which is the Catholic Church, represented by the priest and his entourage. This is not to say that Orpen ignores the Church's worldly side. As a squire, or landowner, the man on horseback would more likely be of the Protestant persuasion, rather than the Catholic, and thus this also sets up a dichotomy of religious beliefs. However the wealth of Ireland resided mainly with the landowners, on the one hand, and the Catholic Church, on the other, and this can be contrasted with most of the remainder of characters, the wedding group (with its sub-groups of the bride and groom, the fiddler with his family, and the group of women), along with Christ on the Cross and the landscape itself, which can almost be considered, in this respect, as a character in its own right.
Another aspect of the spiritual also seems to be represented - that of good versus evil - a theme deeply embedded in the Irish psyche, and expressed in many of their legends and much of their folklore. I think it is most likely, in this regard, that our man, 'The Tramp', taken from the drawing, an 'old drunkard squatting on the ground among a litter of pigs', as Konody somewhat puzzlingly describes him, comes into his own. Orpen has placed him in the lists in direct opposition to Christ on the Cross. Both are connected and separated in the composition by a strong implied diagonal axis. This figure represents the dark side, an evil or unclean spirit, perhaps in a similar manner to the goat in Orpen's Sheep and Goats, referred to earlier. The clues suggesting the malevolent nature of this character are there. He pays no heed to the goings on at the Wedding and is ignoring the Christ figure on the cross, yet there is a strong compositional relationship between the two figures as already described. The presence of the pigs and their significance both in folklore and biblical terms as harbingers of ill omen or evil, and the presence of a ghoulish demon-like figure emanating from under his feet, recumbent, looking like a squashed cartoon character among the pigs, also add to the symbolism.
This work then, is a well crafted study for what must be considered a significant figure, (although this may not seem to be the case at first sight), in one of Orpen's major works, perhaps the most successful of the Irish trilogy.'
Notes:
1. A photograph of Udolphous Wright is reproduced in Ireland's Abbey Theatre: A History 1899-1951, compiled by Lennox Robinson, Sidgwick and Jackson Limited, 1951, but is inconclusive.
2. Joseph Holloway's Abbey Theatre edited by Robert Hogan and Michael J. O'Neill, Southern Illinois University Press, 1957, pp. 162-3.
3. Sheep and Goats is fully discussed in Christie's 11 November 1999 sale of Important British and Irish Art catalogue, lot 34 (sold for 4,500), pp. 90-93. Orpen's attitude to the Irish Cultural Revival is also touched upon, as is his attitude to the teaching of Art in Ireland at the time.
4. The Tinkers' Wedding was considered too inflammatory in relation to its treatment of the clergy for Irish audiences and so was never actually performed at the Abbey.
5. See Note 3.
6. B. Arnold, Orpen Mirror to an Age, London, 1981, p. 296, Western Wedding illustrated p. 292.
7. Ibid., p. 294.
8. P.G. Konody and S. Dark, William Orpen Artist and Man, London, 1932, p. 176, The Western Wedding illustrated pl. XL, facing p. 178.
9. Ibid., pp. 176-181.
10. Ibid., pp. 294-295.
We are very grateful to The Orpen Research Project for their assistance in preparing this and the following catalogue entries for lots 178-189.
Orpen sometimes would note the name and address of the model on the preliminary sketches for The Western Wedding and The Holy Well (1916, National Gallery of Ireland), as he has apparently done in this case, with the annotation 'Address O. Wright Esq Abbey Theatre Dublin'. Although no trace has been found of an 'O. Wright' being connected with the Abbey Theatre, there was a 'U. Wright' and it is possible that this is the person to whom Orpen was referrring - the letter 'U' being badly formed. Udolphous Wright, more familiarly known as 'Dossie' was connected with the Abbey Theatre from the early days (circa 1903) and his assocation continued for about fifty years. He was an electrician by trade, and his principal role at the Abbey was that of chief electrician. However, he turned his hands to most things and other roles included, at one time or another, Management Committee Member, minor part player, Theatre Manager, Stage Manager and play director. He was certainly still acting in minor parts in plays at about the time Orpen was visiting Dublin, when no doubt the latter would have taken the opportunity to visit the Abbey. For instance Wright appears in the cast list for Synge's Playboy of the Western World (1907), the notorious and riotous opening night of which Orpen attended. If it is Udolphous being depicted (1), he must be in character. Although his name does not appear in any of the cast lists for plays performed during the summer of 1914, when Orpen was working on The Western Wedding, he may have appeared as part of 'The Crowd' in A Minute's Wait, a one act farce by Martin J. McHugh, which opened 27 August 1914. Joseph Holloway describes his impressions of the play thus: 'The dressing and playing of some of the characters were bordering on the stage-Irishman type ... Like in Jack B. Yeats's pictures, a convention is rapidly creeping into Abbey plays, and all the characters are attired as tramps or such-like, instead of attired as in nature we fine them' (2). Orpen's character figure with kit-bag by his feet and glass by his side, fits the bill, and could well have come straight out of this play.
Orpen may have also noted these stereotypical characterisations being employed by the Abbey Theatre at that time and introduced similar figures as a parody into his own composition. Just as he may have done in the watercolour Sheep and Goats (private collection) (3). Certainly The Western Wedding seems to be full of stereotypes, and Orpen would have relished the added irony of including an actual Abbey Theatre Company member in the composition.
Thus, with the annotation, Orpen does establish a connection with the Abbey Theatre. The Theatre provided a showcase for Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats and John Millington Synge - individuals at the heart of the Celtic Revival Movement. Orpen would have seen a number of the productions over the years, penned both by these and other lesser known authors, and these plays about Irish folk may well have had some influence on his Irish allegorical works. These works do not appear to relate to any individual productions, many of which were fairly minor. It is rather that Orpen was parodying the general atmosphere exemplified by such productions, probably considering most of them two-dimensional, with the exception of those by one Abbey playwright, John Synge, whom he truly respected. In Stories of Old Ireland and Myself Orpen describes Synge thus: 'Then the Abbey Theatre started, and John Synge wrote wonderful plays and books. He knew Ireland, the humour, the sadness of it all, better than anyone ever did. And he expressed his knowledge of his works in words that burn deep into the heart of all who know and love the country. What a master he was, this calm, modest, shy, great man! Alas! he is dead, and there is no one who can fill his place'. Synge, however, had died in 1909. Orpen realised that, like himself, Synge did not take himself too seriously, seeing within the Celtic Revival ironic contrasts; contrasts which litter, and were used to great effect in his plays, and which suggest a somewhat ambivalent commitment to the cause. In this respect Orpen's work may be considered in the guise of a clever pastiche, using this type of approach together with such titles from Synge's plays as The Tinker's Wedding (circa 1904) (4) and The Well of Saints (1905), to suggest the themes and style, if not the content, for The Western Wedding and Nude Pattern: The Holy Well respectively. However, the origins of the first of the three Irish fantasies, Sowing New Seed for the Board of Agriculture and Technical instruction for Ireland (1913, Mildura Arts Centre, Australia), has its origns elsewhere, being more specifically a comment on art teaching in Ireland rather than the more general observations of the Irish character which characterizes the two later works (5). Bruce Arnold quotes a letter from Orpen to John Lavery from France about his feelings about art in Ireland (6), but in this context demostrates his high regard for John Synge: 'Some day soon big things will happen there in the art world - but it must not be forced - they must find their own legs and they have not been on them in ½ a century - except John Synge - I feel sure that the worst thing we can do for them at the moment is help them. But in a few years things will be different. Please do not think I was ever treated badly in Dublin. I love the place and love the people, even that great (?) one Dermod O'B 'The Master of those who do not know'. Oh yes we'll come to our place soon. But we must get a bit modest first ... I think for the moment we want treating as the gentlemen over here tell you to treat the ladies 'treat 'em rough'. It's cruel work - but one must be cruel to be kind (sometimes).'
The picture itself is far too complex and worked on too many levels to fully analyse here, and is open to many interpretations. Arnold (7), for instance, considers it along with the other two pictures in the 'Irish trilogy' in the context of the Irish nation's search for identity. In all spheres Irish, whether it be the landscape itself, faith, dress, manner, culture and sexuality, as it moves with unstoppable force ever closer to independence like the ice at the end of a glacier just before it breaks off into the sea. P.G. Konody (8), on the other hand, considers the work 'Quite isolated among these pictures, though closely allied in spirit, subject, manner of treatment and use of the marble medium to the Nude Pattern - Holy Well, Ireland', and sees the whole composition more in terms of affluence or plenty contrasted with hardship or famine; the former represented by the 'corpulent farmer' on horseback and the Rolls Royce, 'a grey motor-car strikes a somewhat incongruous note of luxury in this scene of very humble rustic life in a remote and neglected district' and the latter by the landscape itself, 'sad, barren, stoney scenery.' Of the other individuals, he describes the bride and groom as 'plain country folk' and the three women as 'witnesses'.
As has already been suggested The Western Wedding is full of Irish stereotypes. However their use and inclusion by Orpen is almost certainly deliberate. There are certain indications that lead to this conclusion. For instance the two-dimensional nature of the stereotype is reflected in the medium Orpen used, which gave the composition a flat appearance, much like tempera would do. It had been recently developed by Windsor and Newton and was known as 'Marble Medium'. Orpen used it for all three of his major Irish allegorical works, in which (especially in the last two) both the figures and landscape were fused into a single compositional pattern. As Konody (9) comments: 'All this wealth of incident is put together with considerable skill, but in rather bizarre fashion, with more than a touch of caricature in the characterization of the Western types, and with probably intentional disregard of the pictorial planes, which results in a certain sense of confusion, the landscape features being, as it were, forced into the foreground, so that the general effect of the picture is as of a flat pattern, or a Persian miniature.'
Another indication is the presence of the Rolls Royce, which, with a certain inevitability seems to have the adjective incongruous attached to it. I cannot disagree with those who have described the presence thus, but I believe its inclusion is more than a whim on Orpen's part to record, show off and celebrate the acquisition of his new pride and joy, or, as a 'luxury' foil for hard life implied by many features in the work, as Konody suggests. From the historical point of view its inclusion is significant because it allows the work to be dated fairly accurately, for he only took delivery of the vehicle at the end of July 1914, and the work was exhibited at the Winter 1914, New English Art Club exhibition, and so must have been completed by the November of that year. That aside, Orpen almost certainly had other reasons for its inclusion. There is no doubt that he strongly identified with it, and it could well be a symbolic representation of himself, for it is a representation of his own Rolls Royce right down to the inclusion of his vehicle's registration number, 'R-2101'. It is obviously a humorous touch, but the humour is profound in that Orpen could be saying, 'this view of Ireland is not real - it is not really what I think - it is what others think - or what they would like us to think - it is a joke, a parody'. The strength of the composition, itself, suggests there are also more serious and deeper messages contained within it. Konody certainly thought so: 'The picture is apt to leave a first impression of being painted in a mood of bantering flippancy, but the very serious and exquisitely wrought studies for two groups in the picture suffice to dispel this notion and to establish the sincerity of the effort.'
Perhaps Orpen is commenting on how Ireland sees itself, or certain movements in Ireland such as the Revivalists see Erin, or how they would like Erin to be seen. Consider, for instance, the haughty man on horseback clutching his book of Celtic lore, showing his handiwork to the female figure representative of 'Young Ireland' sat uncomfortably behind him on the horse. Whether he be the Squire, or, as Arnold (10) suggests, the matchmaker, he appears to be master of all that he surveys. But in Orpen's eyes it is a view or a vision that is not realistic. As the history of Pre-Raphaelites demonstrated, living in the past will never prove to be a practical option in the long run. Progress, in the guise of the Rolls Royce, cannot be ignored, and will inevitably and irrevocably intrude on this idyll. This could also help to explain why Orpen's technique contrasts so completely from the realism which more normally characterizes his approach, and for which he is more widely known.
On another level, Orpen seems to be setting tensions between the various figure elements in the work, contrasting the various groups and individuals. What each element represents is subject to conjecture, and may well be symbolic of more than one concept. Again, taking as an example the man on horseback, he may also represent the temporal aspect of Irish life which in turn is used as a device to offset the spiritual aspects, one of which is the Catholic Church, represented by the priest and his entourage. This is not to say that Orpen ignores the Church's worldly side. As a squire, or landowner, the man on horseback would more likely be of the Protestant persuasion, rather than the Catholic, and thus this also sets up a dichotomy of religious beliefs. However the wealth of Ireland resided mainly with the landowners, on the one hand, and the Catholic Church, on the other, and this can be contrasted with most of the remainder of characters, the wedding group (with its sub-groups of the bride and groom, the fiddler with his family, and the group of women), along with Christ on the Cross and the landscape itself, which can almost be considered, in this respect, as a character in its own right.
Another aspect of the spiritual also seems to be represented - that of good versus evil - a theme deeply embedded in the Irish psyche, and expressed in many of their legends and much of their folklore. I think it is most likely, in this regard, that our man, 'The Tramp', taken from the drawing, an 'old drunkard squatting on the ground among a litter of pigs', as Konody somewhat puzzlingly describes him, comes into his own. Orpen has placed him in the lists in direct opposition to Christ on the Cross. Both are connected and separated in the composition by a strong implied diagonal axis. This figure represents the dark side, an evil or unclean spirit, perhaps in a similar manner to the goat in Orpen's Sheep and Goats, referred to earlier. The clues suggesting the malevolent nature of this character are there. He pays no heed to the goings on at the Wedding and is ignoring the Christ figure on the cross, yet there is a strong compositional relationship between the two figures as already described. The presence of the pigs and their significance both in folklore and biblical terms as harbingers of ill omen or evil, and the presence of a ghoulish demon-like figure emanating from under his feet, recumbent, looking like a squashed cartoon character among the pigs, also add to the symbolism.
This work then, is a well crafted study for what must be considered a significant figure, (although this may not seem to be the case at first sight), in one of Orpen's major works, perhaps the most successful of the Irish trilogy.'
Notes:
1. A photograph of Udolphous Wright is reproduced in Ireland's Abbey Theatre: A History 1899-1951, compiled by Lennox Robinson, Sidgwick and Jackson Limited, 1951, but is inconclusive.
2. Joseph Holloway's Abbey Theatre edited by Robert Hogan and Michael J. O'Neill, Southern Illinois University Press, 1957, pp. 162-3.
3. Sheep and Goats is fully discussed in Christie's 11 November 1999 sale of Important British and Irish Art catalogue, lot 34 (sold for 4,500), pp. 90-93. Orpen's attitude to the Irish Cultural Revival is also touched upon, as is his attitude to the teaching of Art in Ireland at the time.
4. The Tinkers' Wedding was considered too inflammatory in relation to its treatment of the clergy for Irish audiences and so was never actually performed at the Abbey.
5. See Note 3.
6. B. Arnold, Orpen Mirror to an Age, London, 1981, p. 296, Western Wedding illustrated p. 292.
7. Ibid., p. 294.
8. P.G. Konody and S. Dark, William Orpen Artist and Man, London, 1932, p. 176, The Western Wedding illustrated pl. XL, facing p. 178.
9. Ibid., pp. 176-181.
10. Ibid., pp. 294-295.
We are very grateful to The Orpen Research Project for their assistance in preparing this and the following catalogue entries for lots 178-189.