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Sir William Orpen, R.A., R.H.A.
1878-1931
portrait of gardenia st. george with riding crop
oil on canvas
109 by 81 cm., 43 by 32 in.
No portraits in William Orpen's career, save those of his wife Grace, come closer to the essence of the man, both in his professional and personal capacities, than the series he did of Gardenia St George between 1908 and 1916. They present us with two narratives, one of them quite open and for public consumption, the other private, intimate, secret. And of the series, for which there is no comparison in Orpen's life except in his self-portraits, this painting of Gardenia St George, dressed in a theatrical costume and carrying a whip in her hands, is pivotal. It shows the young girl, whom Orpen had painted as a child, now on the threshold of womanhood, the understanding of herself and her position evident in the expression in her face and her eyes. It is for this reason arguably the most beautiful of the series for its human appeal and the depth of understanding Orpen has brought to it. It is perhaps challenged for beauty only by the sublime Gardenia on a Donkey [illustrated in colour, Orpen: Mirror to an Age, opposite. p. 352]. But then beauty, in portraiture, is never the whole of the story.
Orpen was painting at the height of his powers, and these were very great indeed. The series of Gardenia portraits was commissioned on an annual basis by Mrs Evelyn St George, whom Orpen met in about 1906 through family connections. The artist's mother, the former Annie Caulfeild, was related to Howard St George, an Irish land agent. He was the grandson of Sir Richard St George of Woodsgift, County Kilkenny. Mrs St George was an American, the daughter and eldest child of George F. Baker, president of the National Bank of America, and a man of immense wealth. She was eight years older than Orpen, and when she met him, in 1906, had grown tired enough of her husband and was looking for a lover. Orpen was of a similar disposition emotionally. Their love affair, which began in 1908, was on a grand scale. It was of huge significance to both of them. The coming together of wealth on the one hand, genius on the other had an electric effect.
Evelyn St George commissioned a number of portraits of herself [see illustrations] which are rightly recognised as masterpieces in the genre. In them she was of course indulging her beauty, her love of style, her wealth and the sense of drama which was an inescapable product of her background. But there is evidence of much more in the sometime severe expression on her face, the faint look of tragedy. The truth was that she was not only bored, she was lonely, despite the frequent presence of her husband and children. This is interpretation is confirmed by her youngest child, Vivien, whose account of her mother is a narrative of frustrations and dissatisfactions. She collected in the American way; houses, paintings and furniture were followed by people and reputations. Orpen was an ideal "possession". To the benefit of posterity she saw in Orpen a wonderful opportunity to mould and refine and encourage his enormous talent as a painter, and she set about the task of encouraging him to recognise and fulfil this greatness as an artist which she felt she had defined.
It was true. His Irish background, his innately modest sense of himself, had to some extent limited his development. He had no private means, and work itself was a motivation without allowing him the freedom to indulge his creativity. She set him "tasks". In the portrait of herself wearing the jade bracelet for example, she had imposed on him the obligation to paint entirely without the use of primary colours as an exercise in artistic brilliance. She also insisted that a great painter should paint his parents, and the product was the double portrait of Arthur Hugh Orpen and his wife, Annie, which is in the National Gallery of Ireland.
In the case of the series of portraits of Gardenia there was, however, an additional purpose and design. Once the love affair with Orpen had started, in 1908, Evelyn St George took charge of its detail, and as part of the arrangement of their lives commissioned summer portraits in the west of Ireland to coincide with visits she made there to be with her lover. She did not like Ireland; she found it wet and cold and could not understand the Irish mind. But she loved Orpen, and wanted to be with him. She made him happy. She owned a house in Connemara, near Maam Cross, called Screebe Lodge, and she went there in the summer each year with Gardenia, commissioning Orpen to visit and paint an annual portrait of her daughter which allowed him to stay for two or three weeks.
As the relationship developed it took on a life in Dublin and in London, and became the source for gossip and eventually scandal. Orpen's first contact with Evelyn St George had been at the family house, Clonsilla Lodge, outside Dublin. But Evelyn St George also had a flat in Berkeley Square, and the lovers met and stayed there, appearing with increasing frequency in London society. This was commented upon in the press. Evelyn St George was over six feet tall. Orpen was just over five feet tall. They became known as "Jack and the Beanstalk". Orpen enjoyed the humour of this immensely, and made witty drawings of the pair of them enjoying themselves at Claridge's or the Ritz, or skating together in winter. They always emphasised his small, dynamic figure totally overshadowed by her slim, tall and statuesque appearance, made even taller by the exotic hats she wore.
Gardenia was the closest witness of these events. She became aware of the love affair and was distressed by it. She made some comment to her grandfather, the American banker, and he intervened and put a stop to his daughter's relationship with Orpen. This occurred at a much later stage, probably in 1915. In any case, Orpen was considering his own involvement in the Great War, and the possibility of becoming a War Artist. When I interviewed Lady Gunston, in the late 1970s, she said that her own realisation of what was going on had occurred before the later and last of the series of portraits of herself by Orpen. This was done in 1916 when she is depicted in an evening dress looking far from happy.
By that stage Orpen had fathered Evelyn St George's last child, Vivien, and he remained friendly with both mother and daughter long after the love affair was over.
The portrait of Gardenia St George with Riding Crop, almost certainly painted in the summer of 1912, coincided, approximately, with the year of the birth of Vivien, Orpen's child with Evelyn St George. The moment of birth is itself shrouded in some mystery, since she was born on New Year's Eve, unexpectedly, in the middle of a party, and no one checked the time. It was her mother who decided on the date of January 1, 1912.
Though Lady Gunston claimed that her knowledge of her mother's affair with Orpen came at a slightly later stage, there is, in her expression in this painting, a remarkable mixture of emotions. There is evident knowledge of the relationship she is witness to, though not full understanding of its extent. The solemn regard, incorporating misgivings mixed with personal confidence, is profoundly compelling; much more so, it must be said, than in the earlier paintings of Gardenia, and undoubtedly more so than in the sad features fevealed in the final canvas.
What Cyril Connolly said generally about the painter is profoundly the case in this work: "Great artists like Epstein and Orpen know how to provide for the public the bewilderment it deserves." Yet for three people, Gardenia herself, William Orpen and Evelyn St George, there was a world of truth and of emotion, of deep feeling and of eventual tragedy in the art cycle to which they all contributed. Neither before nor since, in his rich and varied career as a painter, did Orpen tackle so wonderfully the subtle and moving narrative of feelings which we see in a series of works in which he meets brilliantly great intellectual, emotional and creative challenges. It is this, above all that raises the picture to the greatness it enjoys.
Bruce Arnold 2001
Provenance:
Commissioned from the artist by Mrs Evelyn St George
Gardenia St George, later Lady Gunston and thence by family descent
Literature:
Bruce Arnold, Orpen: Mirror to an Age, Jonathan Cape, London, pp 237-242, ill. p. 240;
Vivien Winch, A Mirror for Mama, London, 1965;
P.G. Konody and S. Dark, Sir William Orpen, Artist and Man, London, 1932, pp
200, and 267-270.