22
WHYTES
SINCE 1783
,
29
Sir William Orpen RA RI RHA (1878-1931)
PORTRAIT OF CAPTAIN COLIN DAVID BRODIE, 1928
oil on canvas
signed lower left
30 by 23in. (76.20 by 58.42cm)
Provenance
A wedding gift from the artist to Daphne Cecil Rosemary
Harmsworth, daughter of Lord Harmsworth, on her marriage to
the sitter;
Given by the sitter to Lord Swinfen;
1
Thence to Averil, Lady Swinfen;
With James Robson 1983;
de Vere’s, 21 November 2000, lot 276;
Private collection
With an original letter from the sitter to Lord Swinfen, 6 May 1964.
In 1937, remembering Orpen, Seán Keating produced the most succinct
assessment of his master’s abilities, ‘What he observed’, he wrote,
seemed to go in through his eyes, be analysed and arranged by his
brain, and written down with inevitable rightness by his unerring hand,
as one complicated movement of his will’.
2
There was a sense of immediacy in this: the painter could uncannily
read the mind’s construction on the face of his sitter and express it
with concision.The glimpse, not the gaze, was enough. His later work
was as ‘authoritative as the shot of a pistol’, Keating concluded.While
later critics, coloured by the vitriolic comments of his nephew, John
Rothenstein, dismissed the portrait cavalcade of Orpen’s closing years,
his pupil’s encomium rings true as we examine the
Portrait of Captain
Colin David Brodie.
This present work sets out the essential character of a man who despite
his chequered career, was handsome and debonair. His strong jaw,
regular features and trimmed moustache indicate a Scot, secure in his
class identity.
3
The second son of an insurance company secretary,
Colin David Brodie (1893-1969) was born in Edinburgh. At the age of
seventeen he was dispatched to Manitoba, Canada to work on a farm,
but only remained there for a short time, before travelling to East Africa
where, in 1915, he enlisted in the Uganda Volunteer Reserve, rising
through the ranks of the King’s African Rifles Battalion of the Middlesex
Regiment. He repatriated to the family home, by that stage at
Wokingham, Berkshire, in 1919. Failing to settle, he returned to Canada
and the United States in 1923, describing himself as a ‘retired Army
Officer’ and giving his occupation as ‘salesman’. However, by the time
of his return to England in July 1923, he had upgraded to ‘stockbroker’
and during the next four years his fortunes improved. Probably through
his friend, ‘Carol’ Charles Swinfen Eady, second Baron Swinfen, he met,
and in March 1928, married Daphne Cecil Rosemary Harmsworth, the
daughter of Lord Harmsworth, the publisher and newspaper
proprietor.
4
It was probably through Cecil, Harmsworth’s son, that the
contact with Orpen was established, he having painted various
members of the Harmsworth dynasty since 1907.
5
In this instance the
painter agreed to produce the portrait as a wedding present and no
fee is recorded in his studio book.
6
Orpen’s wife, Grace, along with one
of their daughters attended the wedding.
7
What appeared before Orpen was a young man in his mid-thirties
wearing a ‘Balmoral’ bonnet with his clan insignia and an ‘Argyll’
waistcoat and jacket, traditionally worn for stalking in the Highlands.
His tie is knotted and pulled forward, and after the fashion of the day, a
brightly coloured handkerchief emerges from his breast pocket.
Although this is not a military costume, it must have called to mind
Orpen’s eighteen months as an Official War Artist and he even shows
Brodie facing right and turning to engage the viewer, in a favourite
pose used for his own self-portraits. Despite the claim that these last
years were fuelled by alcohol, there is no diminution of Orpen’s powers
in the handling of the portrait.The figure is confidently executed and
brushstrokes crossing the left shoulder follow the direction of the form
down into the sleeve before they fade into under-paint. Close
examination reveals that the hat ribbons have been repositioned, and
its contour softened and sharpened around the crown of the head.
Keating accurately observed Van Dyck, Hals and Goya in Orpen – but in
this instance we have a sitter who is ‘assured and well-bred like the
people of Raeburn’.
8
Sadly Brodie’s marriage ended in divorce in 1937
and twelve years later he emigrated to Australia. But this too did not
last, and by 1956 he was back in Scotland where he married for a
second time. He died in Montrose in 1969, aged 75.
Professor Kenneth McConkey and Christopher Pearson
Orpen Research Project
September 2013
For a detailed biography on the sitter see
1
See accompanying letter Colin David Brodie to Carol, Lord Swinfen, 6 May 1964.
2
Seán Keating. ‘William Orpen, A Tribute’, Ireland Today, 1937 p. 21-2
3
The Brodie clan hailed from Lethen, on the Moray Firth in Scotland.
4
Carol Swinfen Eady, second Baron Swinfen, was a barrister who inherited his
father’s profession and his wealth. Like the Harmsworths he lived in Hyde Park
Gardens.
5
Bruce Arnold, Orpen, Mirror to an Age, 1981 (Jonathan Cape), p.423, provides
this reference, but mistakenly attributes Orpen’s remarks to Daphne’s brother
Cecil’s wedding, which took place nearly two years earlier in December 1926.
Cecil Harmsworth, like his elder brothers,Viscount Northcliffe and Viscount
Rothermere was a publisher. He had however, a deeper interest in the arts than
either. His younger brother, Alfred St John Harmsworth was painted by Orpen in
1929.
6
The artist’s Studio Book for 1928 records the present work as ‘Mr Brodie for Miss
Harmsworth (present)’. Cara Copeland in her list of Orpen’s pictures confirms
this with the note: ‘a wedding present to Cecil Harmsworth’s daughter’.
7
The Times
(London, England),Thursday, Mar 15, 1928; pg. 17; Issue 44842.
MARRIAGE. Captain C. D. Brodie and Miss Harmsworth.
8
Seán Keating. ‘William Orpen, A Tribute’,
Ireland Today
, 1937 p. 25.
€
20,000-
€
30,000 (£17,090-£25,640 approx.)
