(Enlarged Photo)

'A Study' - Emily Scobel

Red chalk, graphite and grey wash

Emily Scobel was a Slade School model, to whom Orpen was briefly engaged in his early twenties. She features in some of the artist's best known early works, notably 'The Mirror' in the Tate Gallery, in which she is wearing the same hat. This study was clearly well thought of by Orpen and his early reviewers. It was chosen to illustrate the first-ever in-depth article on Orpen, in the August 1901 edition of 'The Artist' magazine. It has a fascinating provenance, too, having remained - until its recent re-emergence - in the possession of members of the Orpen circle and their descendants. It was owned initially by Mary 'Guinea' Price, a one-time model for Orpen's contemporary Walter Sickert, and a member of the artist's close group of friends in Dieppe. It was then inherited by her niece, Kathleen Fairbanks (1866-1966), who was a long-established friend of Orpen and his companion in the latter years of the artist's life. Kathleen Fairbanks died within months of her 100th birthday and left it to a cousin, from whose widow it was purchased. In the family, it was known, somewhat Orpen-ishly, as 'The Pink Lady'.

Provenance:

Artist to:
Coll: Mary 'Guinea' Price
Coll: Kathleen Fairbanks (1866-1966)

By descent

Literature:
The Artist, August 1901
Exhibited:
New English Arts Club 1900 (Orpen's first post-Slade Exhibition)