William Quiller Orchardson
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Sir William Quiller Orchardson (27 March1832—13 April1910) was a noted Scottish portraitist and painter of domestic and historical subjects who was knighted in June 1907, at the age of 75.
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Early years
Orchardson was born in Edinburgh, where his father was engaged in business. "Orchardson" is a variation of "Urquhartson," the name of a Highland sept settled on Loch Ness, from which the painter is descended.
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. 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 seven subsequent 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, Peter Graham, George Hay and William McTaggart.
The years in London
In 1862, at the age of thirty, Orchardson moved to London, and established himself at 37 Fitzroy Square, where be was joined twelve months later by his friend John Pettie. The same house was afterwards inhabited by Ford Madox Brown. The English public was not immediately attracted to Orchardson's work. It was too quiet to compel attention at the Royal Academy, and Pettie, his junior by four years, stepped before him for a time and became the most readily accepted member of the school. Orchardson confined himself to the simplest themes and designs, to the most reticent schemes of colour. Among his most highly regarded pictures during the first eighteen years after his move to London were "The Challenge", "Christopher Sly", "Queen of the Swords", "Conditional Neutrality", "Hard Hit" - perhaps the best of all - and, within his own family, portraits of his wife and her father, Charles Moxon. In all these, good judgment and a refined imagination were united to a restrained but consummate technical dexterity. During these same years he made a few drawings on wood, turning to account his early facility in this mode.
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 sturm und drang. In 1865 Pettie married, and the Fitzroy Square ménage was broken up. In 1868 Orchardson was elected A.R.A. (Associate of the Royal Academy). In 1870 he spent the summer in Venice, travelling home in the early autumn through a France overrun by the German armies. His marriage to Helen Moxon occurred on April 6 1873, and in 1877 he was elected to the full membership of the Royal Academy. In this same year he finished building Ivyside, a house at Westgate-on-Sea with an open tennis-court and a studio in the garden. William Quiller Orchardson died in London two-and-a-half weeks after his 78th birthday, having been knighted less than three years previously.
Legacy
Orchardson's wider popularity dates from 1881. To that year's Academy he sent the large "Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon", which, for nearly a century, has been in the Tate Gallery. Its success with the public was great and instantaneous, and for a decade or more, Orchardson's work was more eagerly looked for at the Academy than that of anyone else. He followed up the "Bellerophon" with the still finer "Voltaire". Technically, the "Voltaire" is, perhaps, his high-water mark. Fine both in design and colour, it is carried out with a supple dexterity of hand which has scarcely been equalled in the British school since the death of Gainsborough. The subject does not appear happy, for it does not explain itself, but requires a previous knowledge on the part of the spectator of how Voltaire was beaten by the servants of the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, and how the duc de Sully failed to avenge his guest. The painter was attracted by the opportunity it gave for effective opposition of character, line, colour and movement.
The "Voltaire" was at the Academy of 1883; it 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", one of his most exquisite productions; 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 fine pictorial use was made of the furniture and costumes of the early years of the 19th century, 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 harpsichords, spinets, early pianofortes, Empire chairs, sofas and tables, Aubusson carpets, short-waisted gowns, delicate in material and primitive in ornament. Between such things and Orchardson's methods as a painter, the sympathy is close, so that the best among them, "A Tender Chord", for instance, or "Music, when sweet voices die", have a rare distinction.
As a portrait-painter Orchardson must be placed in the first class. His portraits are not numerous, but among them are a few which rise to the highest level reached by modern art. "Master Baby", a picture, connecting subject-painting with portraiture, is a masterpiece of design, colour and broad execution.
"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, above all, "Sir Walter Gilbey, Bart." would all deserve a place on any list of the best portraits of the 19th century. In this branch of art, the "Sir Walter Gilbey" may fairly be called the painter's masterpiece, although the sumptuous full-length of the Scottish provost, in his robes, runs it closely. The scheme of colour is reticent; had the picture been exhibited at the time of the Second Boer War of 1900, the colour would have been called khaki; the design is simple, uniting nature to art with a rare felicity, with the likeness being found satisfactory by the sitter's friends.
The most important commission. ever received by Orchardson as a portrait-painter was that for the Royal group of Queen Victoria with her son (afterwards King Edward VII), grandson and great-grandson, to be painted on one canvas for the Royal Agricultural Society. The painter hit upon a happy notion for the bringing of the four figures together, and as time went on and the picture slowly turned into history, its merit was likely to be better appreciated. He continued painting to the end of his life, and had three portraits ready for the Royal Academy in the final year of his life, 1910.
Artistic Method
Orchardson's method was that of one who worked under a creative, decorative and subjective impulse, rather than under one derived from a wish to observe and record. His affiliation is with Watteau and Gainsborough, rather than with those who would base all pictorial art on a keen eye for actuality and "value". Among French painters, his pictures have excited particular admiration.
