Trench Modernism: William Orpen’s career as war artist
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Date
27/06/2015Item status
Restricted AccessEmbargo end date
23/11/2024Author
Cuzman, Miruna Sinziana
Metadata
Abstract
In response to growing German propaganda during the First World War, the British
Government formed a special Propaganda Department, which used visual art as a means
of boosting up the morale of civilians and British soldiers on the Front. The War Artists‟
Scheme brought into being under the auspices of the Propaganda Department in 1914
allowed some of the most promising British artists to produce memorable paintings. The
works documented the numerous sites of the Western and Eastern Front. In addition, the
artists employed under the scheme presented the nation with portraits of notable military
and political figures engaged in the war effort.
This thesis investigates how William Orpen, an established society portraitist and
A.R.A., fits into the War Artists‟ Scheme. His position was problematic: as a painter
working in an early twentieth-century descriptive vein and older than other artists at the
Front, how did he fare in this troubled context? Orpen‟s work on the Western Front
(France and Flanders) has been so far neglected and considered to be of little relevance in
comparison to what other avant-garde artists produced during the same time span. The
thesis investigates how Orpen, although painting in an early twentieth-century
representational style considered slightly passé, embedded in his works innovative means
of expression, creating vivid, haunting imagery, adding to a body of work which was
supposed to be documentary a depth reminiscent of ecclesiastic artistic practice. The
thesis attempts to re-evaluate Orpen‟s war oeuvre, an aspect of the artist‟s rich imagery
hitherto left to oblivion.