William Quiller Orchardson
William Quiller Orchardson | |
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Born | Edinburgh, Scotland | 27 March 1832
Died | 13 April 1910 London, England | (aged 78)
Nationality | British |
Spouse | Helen Moxon (m. 1873) |
Sir William Quiller Orchardson RA (27 March 1832 – 13 April 1910)[1] was a Scottish portraitist and painter of domestic and historical subjects who was knighted in June 1907, at the age of 75.[2]
Early years
Orchardson was born in
At the age of fifteen, Orchardson was sent to Edinburgh's renowned art school, the Trustees' Academy, then under the mastership of Robert Scott Lauder, where he had as fellow-students most of those who afterwards shed lustre on the Scottish school of the second half of the 19th century.[3] As a student, he was not especially precocious or industrious, but his work was distinguished by a peculiar reserve and an unusual determination that his hand should be subdued to his eye, with the result that his early works reach their own ideal as surely as those of his maturity.
By the time he was twenty, Orchardson had mastered the essentials of his art, and had produced at least one picture which might be accepted as representative, a portrait of sculptor John Hutchison.
For the next seven years he worked in Edinburgh, some of his attention being given to a "black and white" style, his practice in which having been partly acquired at a sketch club, which, in addition to Hutchison, included among its members Hugh Cameron, George Hay and William McTaggart.
Years in London
In 1862, at the age of thirty, Orchardson moved to London, and established himself at 37 Fitzroy Square, where he was joined twelve months later by his friend John Pettie. The same house was afterwards inhabited by Ford Madox Brown.[4]
The English public was not immediately attracted to Orchardson's work. It was too quiet to compel attention at the
Later life
The period between 1862 and 1880 was one of quiet ambitions, of a characteristic insouciance, of life accepted as a thing of many-balanced interests rather than as a matter of
There is a memorial which mentions Orchardson within Margate Cemetery, Kent. Now fallen over, its inscription reads:
In memory of William Quiller Orchardson (Knight) R.A., H.R.S.A, D.C.L, and Officer of the Legion of Honour. Born 27 March 1833, died 13 April 1910.
Ellen Orchardson his wife born 5 May 1853, died 13 May 1917.
Capt. Charles Moxon Quiller Orchardson born 24 December 1873, died of wounds in Egypt 26 April 1917.
Celeste Orchardson born 24 December 1876, died 30 August 1877.
Legacy
Orchardson's wider popularity dates from 1880. To that year's Royal Academy summer exhibition he sent the large Napoleon on board the Bellerophon, which was acquired for the national collection by the Trustees of the
The Voltaire was followed, in 1884, by the "Marriage de convenance", perhaps the most popular of all Orchardson's pictures; in 1885, by "The Salon of Madame Récamier"; in 1886, by "After", the sequel to the "Marriage de convenance", and "A Tender Chord"; in 1887, by "The First Cloud"; in 1888, by "Her Mother's Voice"; and in 1889, by "The Young Duke", a canvas on which he returned to much the same pictorial scheme as that of the "Voltaire". Subsequently, he exhibited a series of pictures in which pictorial use was made of the Empire style, the subjects, as a rule, being only just enough to suggest a title. "An Enigma", "A Social Eddy", "Reflections", "If music be the food of love, play on!", "Music, when sweet voices die, vibrates on the memory", "Her First Dance" — in these, opportunities are made to introduce old keyboard instruments, Aubusson carpets, and short-waisted gowns.
Orchardson in Master Baby connected subject-painting with portraiture. "Mrs Joseph", "Mrs Ralli", "Sir Andrew Walker, Bart.", "Charles Moxon, Esq.", "Mrs Orchardson", "Conditional Neutrality" (a portrait of Orchardson's eldest son as a boy of six), "Lord Rookwood", "The Provost of Aberdeen" and, notably, "Sir Walter Gilbey, Bart.", were distinguished portraits. The major commission received by Orchardson as a portrait-painter was that for the Royal group of
Works
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Voltaire
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Sir John Leng (1828–1906),
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St. Helena 1816: Napoleon dictating to Count Las Cases the Account of his Campaigns
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William Quiller Orchardson - Toilers of the Sea (1870)
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Mrs Charles Moxon
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Master Baby
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Peter Russell, Esq.
Notes
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th ed., 2007. The 11th edition gives his birth year as 1835.
- ^ Gray, Hilda Orchardson (16 August 2022). The Life of Sir William Quiller Orchardson. DigiCat.
- .
- ^ "Fitzroy Square Pages 52–63 Survey of London: Volume 21, the Parish of St Pancras Part 3: Tottenham Court Road and Neighbourhood. Originally published by London County Council, London, 1949". British History Online. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
References
- Armstrong, Walter (1911). Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. . In
- Walter Armstrong (1895). The Art of William Quiller Orchardson. Macmillan and Co. p. 1.
William Quiller Orchardson.
- Auber, Eugene (1894). Note on Mr. Orchardson as a Dramatist, The Art Journal, Volume 56. London: The Art Union. pp. 32–34.