Exhibition

An Enchanted Land

It was like an enchanted land

The Somme, August 1917 · An Onlooker in France, 1921, p. 36

As printed: W. Orpen, An Onlooker in France, 1917–1919 (London: Williams and Norgate, 1921), p. 36

William Newenham Montague Orpen 1878–1931

To the Unknown British Soldier in France, 1921–1928

One could travel to many corners of the world before finding such pure beauty. Yet with it always a feeling of sadness, a calm, overpowering sadness, a sadness one cannot explain.

William Orpen, on Dublin Bay · Stories of Old Ireland & Myself, 1924, p. 3

And every picture that he painted was a chapter of autobiography.

Sidney Dark, the artist’s friend · Konody, Dark 1932, p. 90

Gallery number: LR 8
Section: Painting
Movement: ‘Realism’
Works: 51
Opened: 12 October 2026

Appendices · Appendices

ISupplementary materialWhere each work is held: collection, acquisition, inscriptions, exhibitions, literature.
IIIndexEvery work in the exhibition in a single table: dates, collections, inventory numbers.
IIIPlacesWhere he stood when he painted, on the maps and plans of the time: Normandy, London, and Ireland from Baedeker, the Somme and Flanders on maps of the front of 1916–1917, Versailles down to the room of the principal work; his words on the places, and photographs of them from those years.
IVDossier of the principal workTo the Unknown British Soldier in France: his words on the erased portraits, the painting as it looked in 1923, with guards and cherubs, press notices and letters from viewers, canvas and the signature ‘ORPEN 1921-8’, provenance, literature.
VLettersHis letters to his wife about the works on the wall, in his own hand: The Vere Foster Family from the letter about the sittings to the sketch with its colour notes, Cany in 1900, the front in 1917, and Le Chef de l’Hôtel Chatham as his Diploma Work.
VICorrectionsNo corrections.

Music of the room

Nearer, my God, to TheeLowell Mason, words by Sarah Flower Adams · sung by John McCormackVictor 64345, matrix B-13225, 1913

The hymn is one Orpen himself recalls. Once in childhood he and two or three other children had climbed high into a chestnut tree by the gate of the house; an old tramp, hearing their laughter from the road, said he would like to come up to them and, asked why, replied ‘Wouldn’t I be nearer to heaven?’ and walked on. ‘But we were very quiet for a bit after what he said. “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” That fine old hymn must have come to our childish minds’ (Stories of Old Ireland & Myself, 1924, p. 5). John McCormack sings it; Orpen painted his portrait in 1923 (National Gallery of Ireland).