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Lot Essay
Master John Drum was the son of the prominent San Francisco banker, John Sylvester Drum and his wife, Georgina (née Spieker). The portrait, along with one of his mother, was painted in Paris, while the family was staying in Europe. As the parents married in 1908, the sitter should be no more than twelve years old.
After painting the War and subsequent Peace Conference, Orpen remained in Paris in the early 1920s, maintaining a studio at the Hotel Majestic. This allowed him to take advantage of the many Americans holidaying in Europe in the wake of the peace. He needed the commissions to rebuild his portrait practice, and retrieve his financial situation, occasioned by his Major's pay being his only source of income for the previous few years, and maintaining studios in London and Paris, whilst providing for his growing family. The Drums were just such an American family, and Orpen was commissioned to paint both the mother for £1,500 (Portrait of Mrs Georgina Drum, sold in these rooms 8 November 1990, lot 49, £23,000) and the son for a further £500. Orpen would have relished the challenge in reproducing the luminosity of the blue gown worn by Mrs Drum, but Master Drum was a totally different prospect. He never particularly liked painting commissioned child's portraits, and did relatively few of them. The dimensions of the work are much smaller than Mrs Drum, which would partly reflect the much lower price. For all that, Orpen succeeded in producing a fascinating and interesting result - a contrast to the earlier child portrait of Master Andrew Spottiswoode, 1911 (private collection) (illustrated in exhibition catalogue, Celtic Splendour, London, Pyms Gallery, 1985, p. 61, no. 23). In the Spottiswoode commission, Andrew's informal clothing and hairstyle is offset against his striking pose, bolt upright and formal, whereas with John the reverse is the case. Here we see the sitter in very formal attire, high white collar, tie and suit, but the pose is more relaxed as he leans slightly forward causing his buttoned jacket to bulge slightly. In both cases Orpen set the sitters against unconventional backdrops. No doubt he felt he had a certain freedom with child portraits in this regard. Orpen found such incongruities amusing, and their introduction into the works would assuredly help maintain his interest, with intriguing results.
This work will be included in the catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Christopher Pearson of the Orpen Research Project.
After painting the War and subsequent Peace Conference, Orpen remained in Paris in the early 1920s, maintaining a studio at the Hotel Majestic. This allowed him to take advantage of the many Americans holidaying in Europe in the wake of the peace. He needed the commissions to rebuild his portrait practice, and retrieve his financial situation, occasioned by his Major's pay being his only source of income for the previous few years, and maintaining studios in London and Paris, whilst providing for his growing family. The Drums were just such an American family, and Orpen was commissioned to paint both the mother for £1,500 (Portrait of Mrs Georgina Drum, sold in these rooms 8 November 1990, lot 49, £23,000) and the son for a further £500. Orpen would have relished the challenge in reproducing the luminosity of the blue gown worn by Mrs Drum, but Master Drum was a totally different prospect. He never particularly liked painting commissioned child's portraits, and did relatively few of them. The dimensions of the work are much smaller than Mrs Drum, which would partly reflect the much lower price. For all that, Orpen succeeded in producing a fascinating and interesting result - a contrast to the earlier child portrait of Master Andrew Spottiswoode, 1911 (private collection) (illustrated in exhibition catalogue, Celtic Splendour, London, Pyms Gallery, 1985, p. 61, no. 23). In the Spottiswoode commission, Andrew's informal clothing and hairstyle is offset against his striking pose, bolt upright and formal, whereas with John the reverse is the case. Here we see the sitter in very formal attire, high white collar, tie and suit, but the pose is more relaxed as he leans slightly forward causing his buttoned jacket to bulge slightly. In both cases Orpen set the sitters against unconventional backdrops. No doubt he felt he had a certain freedom with child portraits in this regard. Orpen found such incongruities amusing, and their introduction into the works would assuredly help maintain his interest, with intriguing results.
This work will be included in the catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Christopher Pearson of the Orpen Research Project.