Lot Essay
'This is one of Orpen's most important works in his early oeuvre, as can be seen by its exhibition history and references in literature. Not only was this the most exhibited of any of Orpen's works in his lifetime, it is also probably the first work by Orpen to be shown outside the British Isles, when it was exhibited in the United States of America at the St. Louis International in 1904.
The composition comprises of four figures in an interior, known to be a room in 21 Fitzroy Street, London (now demolished). The central figure, the patient, is seated in a chair with his feet resting on a footstool. His leg is being examined by a kneeling figure. An older man, standing on the far right of the work, has his arm resting on the mantelpiece, and the fourth figure is a woman, standing behind the patient, her hands resting on his shoulders. All are in profile except the kneeling figure who is three quarters to the front.
The composition itself is somewhat reminiscent of Frederick Daniel Hardy's Playing at Doctors from 1863 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London). Apart from the similarity of theme (Orpen could well be equating the children's idea of 'play' with the Victorian artist's idea of 'drama'), certain elements are contained in both works. If, as is entirely possible, Orpen was aware of Hardy's picture, he could have taken the basic idea, modified certain elements, discarded and introduced others, to forge his own unique composition in support of his own ideas and humour. After all, Orpen stated in an unidentified newspaper clipping reviewing Palm Sunday A.D. 33, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1931, that 'I can put any work of art I like into any of my pictures without acknowledgement'. It would probably amuse him to deliberately 'borrow' from a mid-Victorian artist, to complement the mid-Victorian literary references.
Almost all of the critical references listed above were complimentary and there is little negative criticism. The points regularly brought out were the contrast in colour of the red dressing-gown, the blue towel, the red-gold hair of the kneeling figure, and the green of the wall, with the shadow passages; and the placement and draughtsmanship of the examining doctor's hands.
However, perhaps the most telling and important of the reviews are those written when the picture was first exposed to public scrutiny at the New English Art Club, Spring 1901 Exhibition, and are worthy of further consideration. Two of these references are important since the critic of The Athenaeum was Roger Fry and that of The Saturday Review was D.S. MacColl. Fry was generally complimentary about the 'brilliance of expression ... The nervous concentration suggested by the action of the doctor's fingers, and the intentness of his expression as he sounds the injured limb, are perfectly rendered'. He commented however on the 'still-life' quality of the composition and went on perceptively to note 'in such pictures the signs of a revival of that particularly English conception of genre composition which Hogarth originated, and which, though it has often been degenerated to mere illustration, has at times been the motive of a sincere and straightforward prose style'.
MacColl made similar points remarking upon Orpen's promise, while noting that the subsidiary figures are 'rather posed than active'. He found Orpen's tonality 'very black and white' and refused to predict whether he would emerge as a colourist. As the principal promoter of Impressionism, we may expect these comments.
The most considered piece by FJM in The Speaker, describes the ensemble at length concluding that 'the central idea is contained in the exceedingly ill-favoured countenance of the sick youth whose expression, half-sullen and wholly self-pitying, Mr. Orpen has reproduced with unusual power'. He then goes into extensive comparison with The Mirror, shown the previous autumn. 'But there is more to be grappled with in this subject than there was in that. The lights are not so simple; there exists a need for a greater variety in the details; the relation to the parts to each other as well as to the whole, regarded with an eye the patter sense, is a matter of vaster difficulty. We note here, moreover, the introduction of a patch of Cambridge blue against the slightly livid flesh of the man's legs, and this garishness, though it is hardly out of tone, detracts from the refinement which signalized the earlier work and imparts an artificiality which is out of sympathy with the distinct note of human realism'. It is clear from this that The Speaker was approaching the picture from the opposite pole to The Saturday Review, in order to confirm a frisson of disappointment with the picture. It was nevertheless admitted that in the New English Art Club, exhibiting with Steer, Tonks and others, Orpen was still a pupil amongst masters.
Thanks are due to William Crampton Gore, who wrote to The Times in April 1943, telling much of the circumstances in which the work was painted. From him we know the location is Herbert Everett's room at 21 Fitzroy Street, London, and Gore himself was renting the room from December 1900 to March 1901, during which time the picture was painted. We know the models - Gore, himself, was the examining doctor (referred to as the 'English Doctor'); a Slade student named Carr was the patient; Emily Scobel, late of Orpen's The Mirror and The English Nude, was the woman referred to by Gore as 'the wife'; and the caretaker, Mr. Haywood, took the part of the 'French consulting doctor', standing with his arm resting on the mantelpiece.
Various commentators on the work have guessed at the characters over the years, without pursuing the literary clue in the full title. All have agreed on the patient, but none have named him; the kneeling gentleman has universally been taken to be a doctor; the woman has variously been described as the patient's wife, sister and mother; and the standing gentleman has been referred as a French doctor and also as the patient's father.
However it appears that Orpen drew on William Makepeace Thackeray's novel The Newcomes for the original concept. Apart from Orpen, at this time, drawing extensively on literature (for example Heinrich Heine's Florentine Nights, The Arabian Nights, Max Beerbohm's The Happy Hypocrite, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Refugees, and Oscar Wilde's The Fisherman and His Soul), for his ideas, Thackeray's novel, with its Fitzroy Square setting, had an added point in its favour, as the Square was little more than a stone's throw from Orpen's lodgings and location for the work, 21 Fitzroy Street. According to William Crampton Gore, 21 Fitzroy Street was a known as 'The Newcomes', but how and when it was christened thus is not known.
What is known is that although Fitzroy Street tranversed one side of Fitzroy Square, Orpen's abode could not have been the '120' of Thackeray's novel, for in reality there was never a '120' Fitzroy Square and also 21 Fitzroy Street was some way south of the square.
Lewis Melville, in his book, The Thackeray Country (London, 1905, p.84) distils Thackeray's descriptions of the house in Fitzroy Square, thus: 'Colonel Newcome and James Binnie, soon after their return from India, rented a vast but melancholy house there, with great black passages, a large black stone staircase, a cracked conservatory, and a dilapidated bathroom. 'Not long since it was a ladies' school in an unprosperous condition. The scar left by Madame Latour's brass-plate may still be seen on the tall back door, cheerfully ornamented in the style [of the end] of the last century with a funeral urn in the centre of the entry, with garlands and the skulls of rams at each corner'. There Clive entertained his friends in his own suite of rooms'. He also identifies, by photograph, that, at least the exterior of No.120 was based on No.37 Fitzroy Square, with its funeral urn still over 'the centre of the entry' in 1905. Orpen, therefore, could well have been aware of this. Also, contrary to some suggestions, Thackeray did not live at 21 Fitzroy Street, when writing The Newcomes (he was living in 36 Onslow Square at this time) and indeed, it is likely that he had no physical associations with the house at all. Much as one may wish it otherwise, the connection seems to be simply a fanciful idea on someone's (perhaps even Orpen's) part, based on the proximity of the properties, their similarities of architecture, and possibly Thackeray's own descriptions of the interior.
Orpen found the idea for The Fracture in book one, chapter 22 of The Newcomes within a letter dated sometime in the 1830s from Clive Newcome, staying in Paris, sent to his friend Arthur Pendennis: 'Please go and see Mr. Binnie. He has come to grief. He rode the Colonel's horse; came down on the pavement and wrenched his leg and I'm afraid the grey's [the horse's]. Please look at his legs; we can't understand John's report of them', and Arthur Pendennis' reply: 'I have been to [120] Fitzroy Square; both the stables and the house ... the horse ... has received no sort of injury. Not so Mr. Binnie, his ankle is much wrenched and inflamed. He must keep his sofa for many days, perhaps weeks. But you know he is a very cheerful philosopher, and endures the evils of life with much equanimity ... His sister has come to him ... She is ... a very brisk, plump, pretty little widow ... [Mr. Binnie's] account of his misfortune and his lonely condition was so pathetic that Mrs. Mackenzie [his sister] and her daughter [Miss Rosa] put themselves into the Edinburgh steamer, and rushed to console his sofa ... The daughter is a bright blue-eyed fair-haired lass, with a very sweet voice'.
Carr, then, is Mr. [James] Binnie, and Emily Scobel, is either Mrs. Mackenzie, Mr. Binnie's sister, or more likely, in view of the descriptions above, her daughter, Miss Rosa. The English Doctor, and the French consultant, seem to be inventions of Orpen, created to complete the scene.
In giving the work the full title of A Mere Fracture in the Newcomes, Fitzroy Street, Orpen is at the same time acknowledging its origins within Thackeray's novel whilst asserting that it is more than just an illustration and is a picture in its own right, by placing it in Fitzroy Street rather than the Square.
Arnold (op. cit., pp.91-92) mentions the development of the picture through early sketches, suggesting that at one stage Orpen was considering including two women in the composition. This is not inconsistent with Thackeray's account, as Orpen could well have been considering including both Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter in the composition.
Artistically the work has been compared to the Victorian genre painters, various critics citing William Mulready, Thomas Webster, William Powell Frith, Sir David Wilkie and William Rothenstein. In addition P.G. Konody draws on William Hogarth and Jan Vermeer, from earlier centuries.
Although the painting stands well on its own, simply as a work of art, knowing the literary context adds another dimension and brings into focus the humour within the composition. Orpen's interpretation of the event maybe: Mr. Binnie, 'the very cheerful philosopher', is at the same time exaggerating his condition by referring to the wrench in his ankle as a fracture, being melodramatic in insisting on a second opinion, and then enduring 'the evils of life with much equanimity', by then dismissing it as 'mere'. As such, the composition and title is entirely consistent with Thackeray's own references to Mr. Binnie's character. Could the artist then in his choice of subject, style and period, have been mimicking Thackeray's humour, in the novel, in his own artistic field by affectionately 'sending up' the exaggerations of those Victorian genre painters in their quest to paint 'true-life' subjects? If such is the case, it could go a long way to explaining the seeming inconsistencies raised in the early reviews of The Saturday Review and The Speaker and that there was more to this young artist than those critics realised'.
We are very grateful to The Orpen Research Project for their assistance in cataloguing this and the following lots by Sir William Orpen.
The composition comprises of four figures in an interior, known to be a room in 21 Fitzroy Street, London (now demolished). The central figure, the patient, is seated in a chair with his feet resting on a footstool. His leg is being examined by a kneeling figure. An older man, standing on the far right of the work, has his arm resting on the mantelpiece, and the fourth figure is a woman, standing behind the patient, her hands resting on his shoulders. All are in profile except the kneeling figure who is three quarters to the front.
The composition itself is somewhat reminiscent of Frederick Daniel Hardy's Playing at Doctors from 1863 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London). Apart from the similarity of theme (Orpen could well be equating the children's idea of 'play' with the Victorian artist's idea of 'drama'), certain elements are contained in both works. If, as is entirely possible, Orpen was aware of Hardy's picture, he could have taken the basic idea, modified certain elements, discarded and introduced others, to forge his own unique composition in support of his own ideas and humour. After all, Orpen stated in an unidentified newspaper clipping reviewing Palm Sunday A.D. 33, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1931, that 'I can put any work of art I like into any of my pictures without acknowledgement'. It would probably amuse him to deliberately 'borrow' from a mid-Victorian artist, to complement the mid-Victorian literary references.
Almost all of the critical references listed above were complimentary and there is little negative criticism. The points regularly brought out were the contrast in colour of the red dressing-gown, the blue towel, the red-gold hair of the kneeling figure, and the green of the wall, with the shadow passages; and the placement and draughtsmanship of the examining doctor's hands.
However, perhaps the most telling and important of the reviews are those written when the picture was first exposed to public scrutiny at the New English Art Club, Spring 1901 Exhibition, and are worthy of further consideration. Two of these references are important since the critic of The Athenaeum was Roger Fry and that of The Saturday Review was D.S. MacColl. Fry was generally complimentary about the 'brilliance of expression ... The nervous concentration suggested by the action of the doctor's fingers, and the intentness of his expression as he sounds the injured limb, are perfectly rendered'. He commented however on the 'still-life' quality of the composition and went on perceptively to note 'in such pictures the signs of a revival of that particularly English conception of genre composition which Hogarth originated, and which, though it has often been degenerated to mere illustration, has at times been the motive of a sincere and straightforward prose style'.
MacColl made similar points remarking upon Orpen's promise, while noting that the subsidiary figures are 'rather posed than active'. He found Orpen's tonality 'very black and white' and refused to predict whether he would emerge as a colourist. As the principal promoter of Impressionism, we may expect these comments.
The most considered piece by FJM in The Speaker, describes the ensemble at length concluding that 'the central idea is contained in the exceedingly ill-favoured countenance of the sick youth whose expression, half-sullen and wholly self-pitying, Mr. Orpen has reproduced with unusual power'. He then goes into extensive comparison with The Mirror, shown the previous autumn. 'But there is more to be grappled with in this subject than there was in that. The lights are not so simple; there exists a need for a greater variety in the details; the relation to the parts to each other as well as to the whole, regarded with an eye the patter sense, is a matter of vaster difficulty. We note here, moreover, the introduction of a patch of Cambridge blue against the slightly livid flesh of the man's legs, and this garishness, though it is hardly out of tone, detracts from the refinement which signalized the earlier work and imparts an artificiality which is out of sympathy with the distinct note of human realism'. It is clear from this that The Speaker was approaching the picture from the opposite pole to The Saturday Review, in order to confirm a frisson of disappointment with the picture. It was nevertheless admitted that in the New English Art Club, exhibiting with Steer, Tonks and others, Orpen was still a pupil amongst masters.
Thanks are due to William Crampton Gore, who wrote to The Times in April 1943, telling much of the circumstances in which the work was painted. From him we know the location is Herbert Everett's room at 21 Fitzroy Street, London, and Gore himself was renting the room from December 1900 to March 1901, during which time the picture was painted. We know the models - Gore, himself, was the examining doctor (referred to as the 'English Doctor'); a Slade student named Carr was the patient; Emily Scobel, late of Orpen's The Mirror and The English Nude, was the woman referred to by Gore as 'the wife'; and the caretaker, Mr. Haywood, took the part of the 'French consulting doctor', standing with his arm resting on the mantelpiece.
Various commentators on the work have guessed at the characters over the years, without pursuing the literary clue in the full title. All have agreed on the patient, but none have named him; the kneeling gentleman has universally been taken to be a doctor; the woman has variously been described as the patient's wife, sister and mother; and the standing gentleman has been referred as a French doctor and also as the patient's father.
However it appears that Orpen drew on William Makepeace Thackeray's novel The Newcomes for the original concept. Apart from Orpen, at this time, drawing extensively on literature (for example Heinrich Heine's Florentine Nights, The Arabian Nights, Max Beerbohm's The Happy Hypocrite, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Refugees, and Oscar Wilde's The Fisherman and His Soul), for his ideas, Thackeray's novel, with its Fitzroy Square setting, had an added point in its favour, as the Square was little more than a stone's throw from Orpen's lodgings and location for the work, 21 Fitzroy Street. According to William Crampton Gore, 21 Fitzroy Street was a known as 'The Newcomes', but how and when it was christened thus is not known.
What is known is that although Fitzroy Street tranversed one side of Fitzroy Square, Orpen's abode could not have been the '120' of Thackeray's novel, for in reality there was never a '120' Fitzroy Square and also 21 Fitzroy Street was some way south of the square.
Lewis Melville, in his book, The Thackeray Country (London, 1905, p.84) distils Thackeray's descriptions of the house in Fitzroy Square, thus: 'Colonel Newcome and James Binnie, soon after their return from India, rented a vast but melancholy house there, with great black passages, a large black stone staircase, a cracked conservatory, and a dilapidated bathroom. 'Not long since it was a ladies' school in an unprosperous condition. The scar left by Madame Latour's brass-plate may still be seen on the tall back door, cheerfully ornamented in the style [of the end] of the last century with a funeral urn in the centre of the entry, with garlands and the skulls of rams at each corner'. There Clive entertained his friends in his own suite of rooms'. He also identifies, by photograph, that, at least the exterior of No.120 was based on No.37 Fitzroy Square, with its funeral urn still over 'the centre of the entry' in 1905. Orpen, therefore, could well have been aware of this. Also, contrary to some suggestions, Thackeray did not live at 21 Fitzroy Street, when writing The Newcomes (he was living in 36 Onslow Square at this time) and indeed, it is likely that he had no physical associations with the house at all. Much as one may wish it otherwise, the connection seems to be simply a fanciful idea on someone's (perhaps even Orpen's) part, based on the proximity of the properties, their similarities of architecture, and possibly Thackeray's own descriptions of the interior.
Orpen found the idea for The Fracture in book one, chapter 22 of The Newcomes within a letter dated sometime in the 1830s from Clive Newcome, staying in Paris, sent to his friend Arthur Pendennis: 'Please go and see Mr. Binnie. He has come to grief. He rode the Colonel's horse; came down on the pavement and wrenched his leg and I'm afraid the grey's [the horse's]. Please look at his legs; we can't understand John's report of them', and Arthur Pendennis' reply: 'I have been to [120] Fitzroy Square; both the stables and the house ... the horse ... has received no sort of injury. Not so Mr. Binnie, his ankle is much wrenched and inflamed. He must keep his sofa for many days, perhaps weeks. But you know he is a very cheerful philosopher, and endures the evils of life with much equanimity ... His sister has come to him ... She is ... a very brisk, plump, pretty little widow ... [Mr. Binnie's] account of his misfortune and his lonely condition was so pathetic that Mrs. Mackenzie [his sister] and her daughter [Miss Rosa] put themselves into the Edinburgh steamer, and rushed to console his sofa ... The daughter is a bright blue-eyed fair-haired lass, with a very sweet voice'.
Carr, then, is Mr. [James] Binnie, and Emily Scobel, is either Mrs. Mackenzie, Mr. Binnie's sister, or more likely, in view of the descriptions above, her daughter, Miss Rosa. The English Doctor, and the French consultant, seem to be inventions of Orpen, created to complete the scene.
In giving the work the full title of A Mere Fracture in the Newcomes, Fitzroy Street, Orpen is at the same time acknowledging its origins within Thackeray's novel whilst asserting that it is more than just an illustration and is a picture in its own right, by placing it in Fitzroy Street rather than the Square.
Arnold (op. cit., pp.91-92) mentions the development of the picture through early sketches, suggesting that at one stage Orpen was considering including two women in the composition. This is not inconsistent with Thackeray's account, as Orpen could well have been considering including both Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter in the composition.
Artistically the work has been compared to the Victorian genre painters, various critics citing William Mulready, Thomas Webster, William Powell Frith, Sir David Wilkie and William Rothenstein. In addition P.G. Konody draws on William Hogarth and Jan Vermeer, from earlier centuries.
Although the painting stands well on its own, simply as a work of art, knowing the literary context adds another dimension and brings into focus the humour within the composition. Orpen's interpretation of the event maybe: Mr. Binnie, 'the very cheerful philosopher', is at the same time exaggerating his condition by referring to the wrench in his ankle as a fracture, being melodramatic in insisting on a second opinion, and then enduring 'the evils of life with much equanimity', by then dismissing it as 'mere'. As such, the composition and title is entirely consistent with Thackeray's own references to Mr. Binnie's character. Could the artist then in his choice of subject, style and period, have been mimicking Thackeray's humour, in the novel, in his own artistic field by affectionately 'sending up' the exaggerations of those Victorian genre painters in their quest to paint 'true-life' subjects? If such is the case, it could go a long way to explaining the seeming inconsistencies raised in the early reviews of The Saturday Review and The Speaker and that there was more to this young artist than those critics realised'.
We are very grateful to The Orpen Research Project for their assistance in cataloguing this and the following lots by Sir William Orpen.