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Lot Essay
When William Orpen exhibited Reflections: China and Japan (Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin) at the New English Art Club in 1903, not only did this mark the painter’s engagement with the most testing of genres, its address to both surface and symbol instinctively appealed to his complex sensibility. The objects chosen were powerful signifiers. They would stand for intertwined Oriental polities now, with the rise of Japanese militarism, at enmity. Cultural significance to the western connoisseur’s eye was honed to a visual conversation between a ‘laughing Buddha’, and Guanyin (Bodhisattva), the Chinese goddess of mercy in 1906. These items of Dehua porcelain were artfully posed in a work later sold to the artist’s important Australian patron, RD Elliott.
Depending on where and how the objects were placed, the milk-white blanc-de-chine figures were uniform in tone but fired with translucent glaze that puzzled the eye with random reflections. In Still Life with Chinese Porcelain Figure, the present, and most reductive work in the sequence, the hieratic figure of the goddess dispenses with her sedentary male companion and sits enthroned, her base washed by the tidal folds of silken shawl.
This important canvas enables us to explore an important friendship. In 1904 Orpen and William Nicholson were founding members of the Society of Twelve, a group of distinguished artists keen to promote drawing and printmaking. Within three years the pair were conferring regularly, holidaying together with their respective families, and Nicholson, now living in Mecklenburg Square, was an occasional user of Orpen’s new studio at ‘The Boltons’ – borrowing Orpen’s collection, including the Guanyin figurine. Adding Rothenstein’s little Rodin Brother and Sister bronze, his placing of the Laughing Buddha, echoes Orpen’s earlier The Reflection (Self-Portrait of the Artist in his Studio) (Private Collection) where same blanc-de-chine Buddha casts his mischievous grin over the proceedings from a lower corner of the picture.
Nicholson was not the only Orpen follower to take up still-life at this point – although arguably the most important. Others followed into the twenties, including Orlando Greenwood, Albert E Cox and WB McInnes, while in Bronze Buddha and Scarlet Hippeastrum 1948 (National Trust, Chartwell), Winston Churchill even tackled the genre. However, even in the post-war years, Orpen remained the unacknowledged forerunner of modern still-life painting, and with Still Life with Chinese Porcelain Figure, its master.
Professor Kenneth McConkey
Depending on where and how the objects were placed, the milk-white blanc-de-chine figures were uniform in tone but fired with translucent glaze that puzzled the eye with random reflections. In Still Life with Chinese Porcelain Figure, the present, and most reductive work in the sequence, the hieratic figure of the goddess dispenses with her sedentary male companion and sits enthroned, her base washed by the tidal folds of silken shawl.
This important canvas enables us to explore an important friendship. In 1904 Orpen and William Nicholson were founding members of the Society of Twelve, a group of distinguished artists keen to promote drawing and printmaking. Within three years the pair were conferring regularly, holidaying together with their respective families, and Nicholson, now living in Mecklenburg Square, was an occasional user of Orpen’s new studio at ‘The Boltons’ – borrowing Orpen’s collection, including the Guanyin figurine. Adding Rothenstein’s little Rodin Brother and Sister bronze, his placing of the Laughing Buddha, echoes Orpen’s earlier The Reflection (Self-Portrait of the Artist in his Studio) (Private Collection) where same blanc-de-chine Buddha casts his mischievous grin over the proceedings from a lower corner of the picture.
Nicholson was not the only Orpen follower to take up still-life at this point – although arguably the most important. Others followed into the twenties, including Orlando Greenwood, Albert E Cox and WB McInnes, while in Bronze Buddha and Scarlet Hippeastrum 1948 (National Trust, Chartwell), Winston Churchill even tackled the genre. However, even in the post-war years, Orpen remained the unacknowledged forerunner of modern still-life painting, and with Still Life with Chinese Porcelain Figure, its master.
Professor Kenneth McConkey