Sotheby’s auction 22nd Nov 2023. Exhibiting highlights from its Modern British & Irish Art Evening & Day Auctions at the RHA Gallery, Dublin, between November 9 and 12. Includes works by Lavery & Yeats and this one by Sir William Orpen R.S.W., N.E.A.C., R.A, R.H.A. 1878 – 1931.

Palm Sunday A.D. 33. Signed: ORPEN (lower right).

Unframed: 42 by 50.5cm.; 16½ by 20 inches.

Framed: 58.5 by 68cm.; 23 by 26¾ inches.

Executed in 1930.

Provenance: The Artist to Miss Cara Copland.

Gifted by the above to Beaverbrook Art Gallery.

Literature: 

Paul George Konody and Sidney Dark, Sir William Orpen: Artist and Man, Seeley Service and Co., Ltd., London, 1932, page 276 (titled Palm Sunday).

One of the Artist’s final pictures, the Saviour and the Donkey motif was inspired by a 12th-century carving in a Berlin Museum. This picture was painted for Miss Clara Copland.

 

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A second version of Palm Sunday by Sir William Orpen (not in this auction).

Private ownership.

 

Post by Dominic Lee, Orpen Research Archives.