Orpen’s painting of The Holy Well, together with a number of preparatory studies for it, was sold to the artist’s wealthy American patron and mistress, Florence Evelyn St. Orpen greatly admired Ingres’ drawings whom he rather resembled in looks but in my opinion they are finer than Ingres’, tho’ it is considered heresy to say so.’ Orpen’s assistant Sean Keating recalled of The Holy Well that ‘The drawings from which he painted the figures were done in lead pencil on smooth white paper, the tones rubbed in with a paper stump. The present sheet is a particularly fine example of the artist’s draughtsmanship of this period. Orpen devoted a considerable amount of time to making careful preparatory figure drawings for The Holy Well, both for individual figures and groups of figures. A large painting, measuring over 8 1/2 by 7 feet, The Holy Well depicts the naked figures of the pagan Celtic people of ancient Ireland who, made to drink from a well, are thereby transformed into Christian Aran islanders. Orpen seems to have intended The Holy Well as a satirical allegory of the Celtic customs, morals and religious practices of his native Ireland, and the composition may have been inspired in part by John M. Painted with a flat, tempera-like finish, each of these three paintings – a group described by one recent biographer as Orpen’s ‘strange and disturbing Irish valediction’ - were preceded by a series of large, meticulous figure studies that attest to the importance the artist placed on the canvases. The Holy Well was the last and arguably the most important of three major allegorical pictures of Irish subjects painted by Orpen between 19, the others being Sowing New Seed (Mildura Art Centre, Victoria, Australia) and The Western Wedding (presumed lost during World War II). This drawing is a preparatory study for the figure at the left centre of Orpen’s painting The Holy Well, exhibited at the New English Art Club in 1916 and now in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.
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