Sir William Orpen

An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press) Sir William Orpen Illustrated edition

Sir, William Newenham Montague Orpen, KBE (1878-1931) was an Irish-born British portrait painter. He studied art at the Metropolitan School and at the Slade School in London where, at the time, great emphasis was put on the study of old masters. He was a fine draughtsman and a popular painter of the well-to-do in the period leading up to World War I. Orpen was made an official war painter of the First World War and in 1917 he travelled to the Western Front. He produced drawings and paintings of privates, dead soldiers and German prisoners of war along with official portraits of generals and politicians.