IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 29 SEPTEMBER 2025

28 18 Sir William Orpen KBE RA RI RHA (1878-1931) FERRIS BLIGH ST. GEORGE, c.1921 oil on canvas signed lower right 30 by 25in. (76.2 by 63.5cm) Frame Size: 39 by 33.75in. (99.1 by 85.7cm) Provenance: Family of the sitter; Thence by descent to the present owner For the younger children of Mrs Evelyn St George, Orpen was avuncular. Known as ‘Woppy’ to Ferris and his sister, Vivien, in the years preceding the Great War, he was almost a member of the family, with a status equivalent to resident magician. Howard Bligh St George, the children’s father, was a cousin of Annie Orpen, the artist’s mother, and when the wealthy couple and their three older children moved to Clonsilla Lodge, on the outskirts of Dublin, she saw an opportunity for her aspiring portrait painter son 1. In a story that has often been told, Orpen would go on to form a liaison with Mrs St George during the years when both their marriages were under strain, and Ferris and Vivien were born. Contact was undoubtedly facilitated by Orpen’s appointment as visiting lecturer at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin in October 1907, and later, by the St Georges’ move to England. From the summer of 1912, the St Georges lived, first at Ashorne Hill in Warwickshire for a short time, and then at Coombe Hill, Richmond, in Surrey, with a London flat at 25 Berkeley Square. Following Ferris’s birth on 25 March 1908, Orpen produced portraits of his mother, his elder and younger sisters, Gardenia and Vivien, his elder brother, Avenel, and Ferris himself, first as an infant, then in the present portrait when almost a teenager. (figs 1&2). Fig 1. William Orpen, Mrs St George, c. 1912, 216 by 119.5 cm, Private Collection; formerly Jefferson Smurfitt Group PLC 1 Bruce Arnold, Orpen, Mirror to and Age, 1981, (Jonathan Cape), p. 184 Fig 2. The St George Family, with Ferris wearing a sailor suit, 1912, from Vivien Winch, A Mirror for Mama, 1965,(MacDonald, London), opp. p. 141.