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Lot Essay
Around 1911 Orpen conceived the idea of following his Portrait Group (Homage to Manet) with a second rendez-vous des amis. This time the leading actors - the painters, James Pryde and Augustus John - are thought to be in dispute over a matter of dress – John having arrived wearing the ‘topper’ and cloak hanging in the background, and Pryde, his habitual ‘black billy-cock’ or cabman’s hat. The present working drawing indicates other witnesses to the contretemps including the painters, William Nicholson and Alfred William Rich, Horace de Vere Cole’s mistress, George Moore, the unnamed waiter, Orpen himself and another figure, not yet identified.
It will be recalled that Moore defined an intellectual or artistic movement as ‘five persons who habitually quarrel with one another.’ In the final painting (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), the unnamed figure became the Dublin surgeon/author, Oliver St John Gogarty. The event occurs in the elaborate Café Royal in Regent Street, London, notable for its elaborate Second Empire décor. Prominent in both study and final work, is the glass of Absinthe and flagon of water with which the green liquor is diluted – a potent symbol of the protagonists’ Bohemian world.
Professor Kenneth McConkey
It will be recalled that Moore defined an intellectual or artistic movement as ‘five persons who habitually quarrel with one another.’ In the final painting (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), the unnamed figure became the Dublin surgeon/author, Oliver St John Gogarty. The event occurs in the elaborate Café Royal in Regent Street, London, notable for its elaborate Second Empire décor. Prominent in both study and final work, is the glass of Absinthe and flagon of water with which the green liquor is diluted – a potent symbol of the protagonists’ Bohemian world.
Professor Kenneth McConkey