Land & Water May 30, 191 8 
The Orpen Exhibition 
Highlander Passing a Cirave 
Man with Cigarette 
Royal Irish Fusiliers 
German Prisoners 
^HE exhibition of paintings and drawings executed on the Western Front by Major William Orpen,' A.R.A., 
which was opened by. Lord Beaverbrook last week at the Agnew Galleries, 43 Old Bond Street, will draw' 
T; . ,, „..„.. 
cverj' one in London. It will be the most talked of picture show this summer, for Major Orpen brings home 
to the beholder the facts of war in the present year in a more vivid manner than any other artist. And 
this is true not only of his paintings, but oi his drawings in black and white. He has an extraordinary 
power of .characterisation, as will be perceived in the four pictures reproduced above ; he compels a personal interest 
in the individuals he portray.s, for one feels they arc the very type of men one would like to know personally. He 
shows some magnificent portraits, notably of Field-Marshals French and Haig, and of Generals Trenchard and David 
Watson. There are two portraits of "A Refugee," a pretty lady, whose anonymity fends additional charm. The tints 
of his landscapes are singularly lo\*cly, and remain in the mind, and he has the power of imparting pathos to broken 
buildings and fields. It is right that this exhibition should be under the direction of the Ministry of Information, for it 
is informative in the best sense of the word. The civilian who enters it leaves with a new sense of the fighting line, 
and a lively visualisation of the scenes of those heroic episodes of w:liich he reads daily in the papers, but which, bv 
very repetition, assume after a time an air of unreality. Major .Orpen corrects this. He conveys every one with' the 
least imagination to the Front, and shows what is actually going on, all the horror of trench and battlefield, and that 
strange ironic beauty in which Nature seems to delight for the niockerj' of man. The. nn+i",-,r. v.00 ^^o^^« 4^ 't,= ^^.,uk. 
grateful to the artist^for the work itself and for his generous gift of it. 
The nation has reason to be doubly 
