In 1902 William Orpen returned to the Life Room. For three weeks, in the spring of that year, he found gainful employment at his alma mater, the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, as a teacher of anatomy. It was a subject that would become core curriculum when in January 1904 he and Augustus John opened their short-lived art school in Chelsea, and the classes would be repeated thereafter in annual summer sessions in Dublin. (1)

For the artist, a commitment to a deep understanding of the human form was essential. The precocity demonstrated in his earliest exercises in figure drawing had brought him to London in the first place. In 1897, at the progressive Slade School of Fine Art, he had studied under the austere artist-surgeon, Henry Tonks, in an atelier-style pedagogy in which men and women students were treated alike. (2) Only in front of the male model in a mixed class, did modesty - in the form of a loin cloth - prevail. (3)

In November 1902, however, the aura of the schoolroom hung over two canvases shown at the New English Art Club as Study of a Man Recumbent and The Rebel respectively. Although partially abraded, the present work is clearly entitled 'The Rebel' on the reverse, which enables us to clarify the relationship between the two versions of the subject.

Both were 'very clever' demonstrations of the artist's 'ability', but their appeal might essentially be to the discerning art student, according to The Echo. At the same time, The Western Daily Press found all four of Orpen's contributions to the exhibition, among 'the most interesting things' in the show and it was left to The Daily Telegraph reviewer to attempt an unravelling of the studies of the 'prone, half-naked' figure. (4) Similar in size, the larger of the two was described as 'an Italian model recumbent and half-stripped' and 'ambitiously styled 'The Rebel'', while the Study of a Man Recumbent, was 'more simply and appropriately styled'. 'The touch of true imaginativeness', it continued,
… that might transform the studio-piece into the poetic evocation of a romantic incident is conspicuously absent. Nothing in this case transfigures the terre à terre realism.

Not for the first or last time was the young artist's unflinching realism the subject of comment. Like Courbet and Manet before him, he would not pander to public taste. It was indeed the case that Orpen was setting a standard of attainment, with no overlay of false sentiment. These were after all académies in the great tradition of nineteenth century French painting, with no holds barred. Delighting in 'intense enjoyment he derived from this mastery', Orpen 'revelled', according to PG Konody, 'in the exercise of his skill, in evoking life out of a dead surface' and, he concluded, 'every stroke of the brush has its definite, expressive function in the modelling of bony and fleshy forms, in the building up of the muscular mechanism …' The title of the Crawford Art Gallery painting - The Rebel - was merely a 'cloak'. (5)

It was common at the beginning of the twentieth century for painters to try to sell their art school figure studies, reworked as heroes from history and myth. Setting, costume, circumstantial detail and dramatic lighting were things to be added if the result was to appeal to collectors. (6) It was a transition that these two paintings, hung close to one another in the same show, demonstrated. Two problematic layers in the placing of the present picture within the oeuvre can now be satisfactorily addressed. It is now clear that while the Crawford Art Gallery painting has been retitled The Revolutionary, there were two versions of The Rebel, not one, and it is entirely possible that Study of a Man Recumbent, as the first 'rebel' appeared in the New English catalogue, may well have obtained its 'Man Recumbent' title at the suggestion of the selection committee as a means of distinguishing between the two. (7)

When Orpen asked the model to roll on to his back and reveal his face it was thus a significant moment when the long investment in the academy was turned to account. Having taken the £5 prize for figure painting at the Slade in 1899 with A Male Figure standing to the left, he had reason to be proud. Back in the Dublin life room in 1902, the challenge was to step forward, to move on, and to find an expressive potential in the naked male that would eventually lead to St Patrick, three versions of Job and St John the Baptist and other works. (8)

As The Rebel (Study of a Man Recumbent, 1902) reveals, there was inevitably, much more to it. Orpen had looked at Rembrandt, had imbibed seventeenth century Spanish Caravaggesque painting and like his brother-in-law, William Rothenstein, had a fascination for Goya. (9) This rich visual heritage glowed through the naked form in 1902. With the knowledge he had attained from looking, from seeing brushstrokes in the prone figure before him, he could do anything. It haunted him until his dying day. (10)

Prof Kenneth McConkey

1. Bruce Arnold, Orpen, Mirror to an Age, 1981, (Jonathan Cape), p. 163.; for Orpen's pedagogical aids see Robert Upstone, William Orpen, Teaching the Body, 2009 (Tate Britain).
2. Orpen and Augustus John, former 'stars' of the Slade School of Fine Art, opened their Chelsea School of Art at the start of 1904, while their networks, and reputations, were growing rapidly. The school however, lasted into its second year when it was sold on; Arnold 1981, pp. 191-2; see also Emma Chambers, Student Stars at the Slade 1894-1899, Augustus John and William Orpen, 2004 (exhibition catalogue, UCL Art Collections);
3. In most early extant Orpen life studies, produced in men-only classes male genitalia are exposed. The presence of a loin cloth in The Rebel, (Study of a Man Recumbent, 1902) may, without written evidence to prove it, indicate that the present work was produced in a teaching studio with both male and female students present.
4. Orpen exhibited Study of a Man Recumbent, (no 51, the present picture), The Rebel (no 78, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork), Study of Myself (no 91, Glasgow Museums) and The Chess-Players (no 129, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).
5. P.G. Konody and Sidney Dark, Sir William Orpen, Artist and Man, Seeley Service, London, 1932, p.158; see also Robert Upstone ed., William Orpen, Sex, Politics and Death, 2005 (Imperial War Museum & Philip Wilson Publishers), p. 19.
6. In the case of The Rebel, the muzzle of a 'shotgun' was noted as the only addition justifying its title. The discarded hat may be a later addition.
7. See Lot Essay by Orpen Research Project, Sotheby's 7 May 2008. The presence of two so visually similar works in the New English winter exhibition leaves open the question of Orpen's intention. A prone figure is approached differently when the muzzle of what was described by a contemporary reviewer as a 'shotgun', is visible by its side.
8. Two versions of St Patrick are known (Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent, and unlocated) and three versions of Job (Johannesburg Art Gallery, National Gallery of Ireland and Private Collection).
9. Kenneth McConkey, 'Dark Identities, Orpen's Hispanic Repertory', The British Art Journal, vol VII, no 3, 2006-7, pp. 62-69. Upstone 2005, p. 19 referring to the Crawford Art Gallery picture, suggests that the figure may be a Paris Communard or a rebel from the 1848 Revolution, his form influenced by the pest-house figures of Baron Gros.
10. See for instance, Nude on the Rock, 1930-1 (Private Collection); Eve in the Garden of Eden, 1930-1 and Nude Female Model (Reading on the Seashore), 1930-1 (both Royal Academy of Arts, London).