UCL Art Museum’s Object of the Week is by Lucy Waitt, Curatorial and Collections Assistant

When I began reading about Slade artists and the First World War to prepare for UCL Art Museum’s ‘Armistice Pop Up’ (November 9^th 2018) I had not expected to become intrigued by William Orpen in particular. Other Slade artists such as CRW Nevinson, David Bomberg and Paul Nash have arguably produced more famous representations of the conflict, but what interested me about Orpen was not so much the work he produced -which is considerable and varied, but his attitude to his war art and ultimately what he did with it after the war.

William Orpen, Three Studies of a Female Figure, and Study of the Leg, c.1899

(more…)