Sir William Orpen – artist

Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen (1878–1931), painter, was born 27 November 1878 at Oriel, Grove Avenue, Blackrock, Co. Dublin. His paternal grandfather, Richard John Theodore Orpen (1788–1876) was president of the Incorporated Law Society and knighted for his services to the legal profession, also founded the successful practice which Orpen’s father, Arthur, later headed. William’s artistic talent was evident from early on, and it was encouraged by his mother against the wishes of his father, who wanted William to study law.

Sir William Orpen

He studied at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA) where his precocious talent was recognised, and he won every major prize awarded by the school before winning the gold medal for life drawing in the British national competition (1897). Later, in London, he again flourished while studying in the renowned Slade School of Fine Art (1897–9) and won the summer competition for his ‘The play scene from Hamlet’.

He was small, only 5 ft 2 in in height, blue-eyed, with plenty of freckles and considered himself ugly, something that shaped his self-image. However, women found him attractive, and he married (8 August 1901) Grace Knewstub (d. 1948), daughter of a London art-gallery manager. They lived in Chelsea and had three daughters. He soon developed a successful practice producing portraits for clients throughout Britain.

He was friendly with Hugh Lane (from their time at the Slade) and he helped organise, and was represented in, Lane’s exhibition of Irish painting at the London Guildhall (1904).

During WWI, and as the most successful artist of his generation in Britain, he spent eleven months in France (April 1917–March 1918) producing paintings that showed the Somme battlefields in all their horror and the savagery of war. In June 1918 he was knighted for his wartime services.

Aftermath – A Memory of the Somme

He fell ill in May 1931, and died 29 September in South Kensington, London. He is buried in Putney Vale cemetery.

Smock Alley Theatre

Smock Alley Theatre, on the south bank of the Liffey, is in one of the oldest parts of the city where many a Viking walked about long before an actor tread the boards of the old theatre. Dublin, as the second city to British Empire, was given its very own Theatre Royal. In fact, it was the only Theatre Royal outside beyond London.

Smock Alley Theatre

The theatre opened in 1662, two years into the reign of Charles II who was determined to bring back ‘the good times’ that Oliver Cromwell and his followers had previously banned. No funds were spared in getting the place ready, and the sparkling chandeliers, colourful drapes and decorated sceneries were an instant success with the audience. It was a leader in the use of ‘footlights’ on the stage, a new innovation that added excitement to the whole experience.  

The Theatre Royal at Smock Alley was a training ground for works by great Irish playwrights, like Oliver Goldsmith (She Stoops to Conquer) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan – below – (The Rivals), both of which are still regularly performed. Nearly three hundred people attended the theatre each night of the week, where they were entertained by actors, acrobats, dancers, musicians and trapeze artists. Candles blazed in brass chandeliers as David Garrick, the greatest actor of the time, moved about the stage holding theatregoers’ rapt attention.

As time moved on other theatres opened and took business away. Then structural problems threatened and soon the place was forgotten about, and it closed its doors in 1787.  A number of different owners came and went before it was stripped bare of its fine interior. The once great theatre now became a warehouse for whiskey barrels!

In 1811 the place was recreated as a Catholic Church and the church bell rang out for the first time in three centuries.

In 2012, Smock Alley returned as a theatre having been restored  – it became Dublin’s Oldest Newest Theatre.

Francis Bacon – Artist

Francis Bacon, born 28 October 1909 at 63 Lower Baggot St., Dublin. His father, who was a former captain in the British army, had moved to Ireland to breed racehorses and moved to Kilcullen, in Co. Kildare. The family lived in London during WWII but later returned to Ireland. Francis suffered from asthma and this disrupted any formal education. He did receive some private tuition before attending Dean Close, a boarding school in Cheltenham, from 1924 to 1926.

Plaque at 63 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin

Bacon as 16 when he went to London after an argument with his father. Between 1927–8 he travelled in Europe, where seeing drawings by Pablo Picasso in Berlin gave him the inspiration to become an artist. Poussin’s  ‘Massacre of the innocents’ also made a deep impression on him. However, the blood-splattered face of a screaming nurse in Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin was an image that Bacon used in later years – as in  ‘Study for the head of a screaming pope’ (1952).

Between 1928-29, he designed modernist furniture and rugs, and achieved some success. However, he was not impressed with what he was doing and soon devoted himself to developing his art. A patron, Eric Hall, helped him financially for many years, and funded the artist’s studio in Fulham. Here he painted ‘Crucifixion’ (1933), his first significant work, and one immediately by the influential art critic Herbert Read.

With ‘Three studies for figures at the base of a crucifixion’ (1944) he was recognised as a new force in post-war art. He exhibited in all the major galleries, and in 1988 he became the first living western artist to have a retrospective in the Soviet Union, at the New Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

He died 28 April 1992 from a heart attack while in Madrid. Years later his studio was gifted to the Hugh Lane Gallery, and the thousands of pieces and walls were carefully documented before their removal and instillation in Dublin.

The artist’s studio

Bye Bye, Boris

Boris going, please make it fast

Oh my Lord, he’s looking aghast

Right, left, boy

In line, what joy

Shove off now, your time’s past

It’s over!

Farewell

It’s a sad day, our cousin is gone

A beautiful one, who we called John

With his friendly smile

And personal style

Many happy memories, that’ll live on.

Shine on..

Don Cameron – April 2022

Cornelius Ryan – Reporter

Cornelius Ryan was born on the 5th June 1920 at 33 Heytesbury Street, Dublin. He attended CBS Synge Street, which was across the street from the family home, before entering the Royal Irish Academy of Music where he studied violin, and graduated in 1936. Always interested in writing he sent plays to various theatres, but he had no success with them.

He moved to London in 1940, and joined the Reuters news agency the following year where he reported on the Blitz. Later, as a war correspondent with the Daily Telegraph he saw action going on fourteen bombing missions with the US Air Force. After D-Day (6^th June 1944) he went with General Patton’s US 3^rd Army as it fought its way through France and Germany to the end of the fighting. In the last few months of the global conflict he went to the Pacific and witnessed the surrender of Japan. While there he opened the Daily Telegraph’s bureau office in Tokyo, before moving to Jerusalem as Middle East bureau chief.

In 1949, after attending the fifth anniversary of the D-Day landings, he began the work that would bring him fame and fortune. Over the next ten years he interviewed soldiers, from both sides, citizens, resistance fighters and wrote his most famous book The Longest Day. It was published to great acclaim in 1959, and made into a box-office movie success in 1962 that featured a cast of famous actors. The Last Battle (1966), his account of the collapse of Berlin, and A Bridge Too Far (1974) the story of the ill-fated Operation Market Garden to seize a bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem were also well received. Bridge was also made into a movie (1977) which was directed by Richard Attenborough.

He moved to Ridgefield, Connecticut, and was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1970. There he worked hard to finish Bridge, and was awarded the French Légion d’honneur in 1973. He died in New York on the 23^rd November 1974. Apart from his name, the single word on his gravestone is REPORTER.

Legion d’honneur

The Boy is Back in Town

The first man caught, and last one down

On his final day, he wore not a frown

Now after many years

And to happy cheers

The Sandycove boy, is back in town

The boy is back in town

Statue to Sir Roger Casement at Sandycove, Dublin Bay

One for the Bard

A most wordy man, from near the A-von

With style and flair, he was so Write On

His phrases that move

Your life to improve

Well done Will, let the music play on

William Shakespeare, Bard of Avon (died 23 April 1616)

Oscar Wilde – A Man of Importance

He was the Happy Prince, from Westland Row

A writer of words, that continue to glow

From Earnest to Gray

To another great play

No better person, to put on a fine show

Plaque at 21 Westland Row where Oscar was born

A man of Importance, and wonderful wit

The Ideal partner, with whom to sit

Of art a true Fan

What a clever man

His piece on the Husband, a joyous skit

Oscar Wilde

From the peak of success, to a soulless Gaol

His spirits burned bright, they did not fail

With absinthe of hate

He beat the dire fate

In De Profundis he penned, a heartfelt tale

Oscar relaxing in Merrion Square

After years in Reading, to beaux France exiled

Where on his last work, he painfully toiled

‘Dying beyond my means’

One clearly gleans

A star to the end, the one-and-only Oscar Wilde

Oscar’s famous epigrams in Merrion Square

This is my poetic, birthday tribute to Oscar Wilde who was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin on 16th October 1854 and died in Paris on 30th November 1900.

Oh what man, was George Bernard Shaw

In celebrating George Bernard Shaw’s (164th) birthday (b. Dublin 26th July 1856) I’ve penned this limerick in his honour.

_______________________________________________________

The great man’s plays, often led to guffaw

On social criticism, with a dodgy in-law

With such clever wit

His words so well fit

Oh what a man, was George Bernard Shaw

 

Doolittle and Barbara, he did draw

And Pygmalion too, without a flaw

You Never Can Tell

How he casts a spell

Oh what a man, was George Bernard Shaw

 

He held the Oscar, tight in his claw

And Nobel Prize, with a smiling jaw

A king of the stage

His work’s all the rage

Oh what a man, was George Bernard Shaw

 

Don Cameron 2020

GBS – art and the man