William Orpen

Nude Pattern: The Holy Well (fig. 1) is a large painting in tempera that William Orpen completed in 1916. According to John Turpin, Orpen’s painting ‘dramatizes the ancient pagan roots of primitive Irish Christianity in a West of Ireland setting. The proliferation of nudes and the “flattened” technique convey a sense of unreality. It is a major statement of Irish decorative painting—an aspect, if slightly perverse, of the Celtic Revival in the arts.’

As is the case with John’s, references to the works of other, historical artists are more than occasionally to be found in Orpen’s work. John’s fascination with groups of figures, for example, owed a debt to Botticelli’s Primavera, as well as to the work of Puvis de Chavannes. In Orpen’s drawing, the postures of the male and female figures echo Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden in Masaccio’s early fifteenth-century fresco in the Brancacci Chapel, Florence. Steeped in the history of art, Orpen would go on to edit the multi-volume series, The Outline of Art, published in 1924.