William Quiller Orchardson The Lyric - Detail (courtesy of Dundee Art Galleries and Museums)

In Munch’s ‘The Scream’ (1893) the death-mask face, the bright colours, the abstracted swirl of sea and sky, create a sense of nightmare. In William Quiller Orchardson’s ‘The Lyric’, painted in 1904, the protagonist is a party-dressed young woman, sitting at a piano in a very well appointed room. Every detail in the picture has been finely considered and painted. This is not a nightmare. This is a very comfortable British society setting, in which emotional distress is presented undemonstratively, not at another character in a dramatic genre picture, but at the painter, and through him to you, the viewer.

All around is the evidence that it’s only portraits where the main character looks straight at you. And they rarely express any feelings, other than self-satisfaction, submission, or puzzlement.  Courbet’s mad stare is a rarity. 

Out of this understated picture, lost in genteel surrounds, comes a directness and emotional power that arrests and captures.

That stare is looking for contact with your eyes and mind, and asking for connection. It is loaded with significance.

It makes all the other pictures in the gallery look a little like light entertainment, and one asks where, in 1904, there were artists looking so clearly and deeply into the human state?

At the Royal Academy Exhibition, April 1904, where it was first exhibited, ‘The Lyric’ was hung in Gallery II alongside, above and below ‘A Stream near Shifting Sand-Dunes’; ‘Chrysanthemums’; ‘Happy Moments’; ‘A Witness Of Generations’; ‘Aimee, daughter of Sir Rupert Clarke’; ‘A Thames Regatta: Evening’; and ‘Willow Witches’.

This is not a world that had absorbed Kierkegaard, Marx or Freud, let alone Zola and Strindberg, and was hardly even registering art developments across Europe.

Whistler’s death hung over British establishment art in 1904 (just have a look at The Studio articles and reproductions that year!). Whistler’s many young women can look pensive, lonely, perhaps forlorn, and they can also look tired of their society world, but none ask you directly what you think about the human condition.

Across 1904 painting, from Cezanne to Picasso, Matisse and Vlaminck, Ensor, Rodin, Corinth, Nolde… everywhere you look, there was a new way of presenting the world, but it wasn’t until Die Brucke and Italian futurists five years later that the inner self became a core subject for painters. And then it was expressed through fragmented abstraction.

In 1904 Scotland, James Guthrie had just taken on the Presidency of the RSA, and was lobbying parliament for a new financial settlement for Scottish art. Thanks partly to his effort, establishment doors were being opened to the world of the Glasgow Boys. Mackintosh was designing and building The Hill House; wealthy art collectors were buying Crawhalls, McTaggarts, Henrys, Hornels; less wealthy ones were still indulging in pretty pictures of Scottish land- and sea-scapes, from McGregor Wilson to Lamond. Pringle was in his prime; John Duncan too; decoration and design flourished.

Introspection, and painters examining the workings of the mind, were beyond the horizons of the Scottish art world.

Leslie Ward (Spy): William Quiller Orchardson ( Vanity Fair, 1898)

Orchardson has never been regarded as a revolutionary. He was one of the most successful artists of his age, making enough money from painting to sustain a house in London’s Portland Place, and a country house in Kent. He was a member of over 20 London clubs, and probably spent more time hunting, fishing, playing tennis and golf, than he did behind the easel. He loved the theatre, and enjoyed company and spending time hosting friends, and being hosted, especially by many across wealthy Victorian Scotland.

In 1904, he was 72. He believed that he was a better painter than he’d ever been, and I’m sure all would agree that his late work is by far his best. ‘The Lyric’ doesn’t just magnetize through its core subject matter; its delicate balance of composition, subtlety of light, colour and tone modulation, and technical detail stand out as remarkable, especially in the context of the period in which he worked.

The French critic, Ernest Chesnau, writing in ‘The English School Of Painting’ (1885) called Orchardson the ‘physionomiste’, noting how he stood out for his ability to see, capture and present facial expressions. This was just at the moment when Orchardson’s penetrating mastery of facial appearance and body language was beginning to reach a new level. His subject matter may not have seemed revolutionary, but his accurate drawing and painting of human expression had few, if any, peers.

Bill Hardie, late of the McManus parish, argued cogently for his reappraisal fifty years ago (note 1). He might have taken an even stronger line if his platform hadn’t been the catalogue for a Scottish Arts Council solo exhibition touring to three major Scottish galleries, and three in England too. That was in 1972. The National Gallery of Scotland had an Orchardson exhibition in 1980, featuring many of the drawings they hold in their collection. Since then, there has been no public presentation. His reputation has continued to drift.  

Today, as I watch, ‘The Lyric’ rarely stops the regular crowd in the Victorian Gallery. It’s emotional power and sophisticated painting are missed, presumably, because they’re presented in muted colours and lack overt drama relative to all the pictures that surround.

On the north side of the East Wall of the Gallery, the three paintings at eye level are, left to right, John Pettie’s  ‘A Scene From Peveril Of The Peak’, Orchardson’s ‘The Lyric’ and Dante Rosetti’s ‘Dante’s Dream’. Despite the weighty subject, ‘The Lyric’ is all light touch, delicate colour, and subtle tonal harmony. The casual viewer goes for the superficial fireworks. ‘Peveril Of The Peak’ is a powerful dramatic piece from Walter Scott’s novel with children disturbed by a terrifying figure in the doorway of their room. ‘Dante’s Dream’ is full on Rossetti: bright red lips, flowing auburn locks in brilliant radiant colours.

‘The Lyric’ and ‘A Scene from Peveril Of The Peak’ have been bedfellows for most of their lives. They were bought from the RA by Sir James Murray, the Aberdeen art enthusiast and collector. He lived at Glenburnie Park, in Rubislaw Den North, where he often invited guests to “see the pictures”. Murray knew many artists as friends. Orchardson had been a house guest in 1896 (and possibly on other occasions), so Murray was acquiring a picture painted by a friend when he acquired it in 1904 from the RA Annual Show.

The two pictures were shown at Aberdeen Art Gallery in 1925 along with the rest of Murray’s collection when the Gallery extensions were opened by King George V and Queen Mary. Then, in 1927, both were included in the auction of 103 works from Murray’s collection held at Christie’s in London. The James Guthrie Orchar Gallery, Broughty Ferry, bought them both, along with another picture by John Pettie: ‘The World Went Very Well Then’. They paid £840 for ‘The Lyric’, (the equivalent of around £61,000 in 2023 money).

Orchar (1825-1898), Pettie, and Orchardson were friends. Orchar hosted Orchardson and his family on several occasions to stay at his house in Broughty Ferry, and they went on fishing trips together. Orchardson’s daughter, Hilda, notes that Orchar had written to her mother in 1891, “Mind, you have the charge of a great artist, but I am sure you can be trusted to take great care of him.”

After Orchar’s death, the Orchar Gallery was housed in Beach House on the sea front at Broughty Ferry until 1987, when the collection was transferred to the McManus, where the two pictures are hung side by side.

William Quiller Orchardson Her First Dance, oil on canvas, 60cm x 84cm (courtesy of Dundee Art Galleries and Museums)

In the Victorian Gallery (which Orchar had a hand in designing), immediately above “The Lyric” is another Orchardson from the Orchar Collection: ‘Her First Dance’. It’s a study in oil for a larger painting, bought by Henry Tate and donated to what’s now Tate Britain in 1894. Apart from scale, the pictures are close to identical. The study and its bigger sister were painted in a very similar studio to ‘The Lyric’, twenty years beforehand, and offer direct comparison, (although the detail of ‘Her First Dance’ can be lost due to the picture’s hanging height and the reflection of the gallery’s strip lighting on its glass).

‘Her First Dance’ was one of three pictures painted in 1884 in a series that started in 1878, with the painting, ‘A Social Eddy (Left By The Tide)’, that might be called society dramas. ‘The Lyric’ was the last.

They all take place in Orchardson’s studios, which were capacious enough to enable theatrical scenes to be imagined and set up. Some were set in contemporary times, some in the early nineteenth century. The costumes and the furniture are the main differences. The subject matter is similar – middle to upper class society dramas, where the viewer is presented with a snapshot from a transitional social scene, with the title offering a caption in much the same way as a humourous picture postcard or social comment cartoon of the period might have done.

The pictures drew viewers into a world that many of the society buyers knew. Those unfamiliar with the rarefied circumstances would be able to recognise the picture’s drama with ease. Orchardson’s planning and detailed execution, especially of body language and facial appearance, created pictures that invite viewers to work on the facts presented. Orchardson offers clues in every figure. Any viewer who takes the time will quickly question the narrative of the drama, and open further enquiries into these delicately poised stagings of a significant moment.

In setting up these dramas, Wilkie was a key influence, and Hogarth too.  Walter Armstrong (note 2) draws the parallel, noting that Hogarth combined “dramatic with aesthetic qualities, and makes his scenes explain themselves, down to the minutest detail”.

In most of Orchardson’s society dramas, a young woman is at the heart of the picture. She is a constant, in different guises based on different models, throughout the series.

Why such a central character? He was known to be susceptible to flirtatious women. He knew that attractive young women sold paintings. The evidence that buyers loved the pre-Raphaelites’ sensuous world was all around him. Fellow Academicians (like Lawrence Alma-Tadema, for example) built their success on dressing up young women in alluring clothes and poses and putting them centre stage. Yet, none of Orchardson’s women engage their dramatic colleagues or the viewer with suggestions of romance or intimacy. They rebuff the foolish posturing of young men, and the misplaced hopes of older men with severity, scorn, and disinterest.

Let’s remember that Orchardson’s key inspiration was observation, and his specialist subjects facial expressions and body language. He married in 1873. He was 41. His wife, Helen, was 20. Hilda, their second child, was born in 1875 and started modelling for him in her Mid-to-late teens. In her twenties, she lived with her parents and travelled with them on holidays. Her brothers left home or were left at home.

From 1873 to 1904, Orchardson had the constant company of young women in his family. They were serious, intelligent people. Helen, reported Hilda, ‘was cheerful and gentle in her manner, yet in repose her face was both severe and sad, and though neither pretty nor beautiful, she was exceedingly good to look at and her face gave everyone a pleasant feeling.”

Orchardson’s women resisted temptation and were often severe. They were always in control. They showed the viewer how to behave in a whole series of society circumstances. These society dramas were almost lessons for how the model Victorian might square their social and moral responsibilities with their hedonistic instinct.

Commentators have ascribed awkwardness to the state of the central young woman in ‘Her First Dance’. I beg to differ. She seems to me to suggest indifference with her suitor’s antics. She looks down, disengaging from his ridiculous flamboyance, avoiding his direct sideways look. Her body is slack, unprepared for the tension of the dance, and expressing disinterest and disapproval, as well as resignation to the ritual. She’s proudly straight-backed and her arms are positioned by gravity, totally disaffected. Yes, she’ll participate, if she has to, but she’s not going to show an ounce of enjoyment. She’ll make the man look the fool he is.

‘The Lyric’ may not have been planned as the final picture in the series, but it was the last one to be completed and shown at the Royal Academy. So the sequence came to an end with the main protagonist, the young woman, alone, looking exhausted and straight at the painter, and the viewer, as though this could be the conclusion, and a summary of twenty five years of social commentary.

Perhaps it’s a little presumptuous to see ‘The Lyric’ as a valedictory on this long sequence (Note 3), but it stands up to the task.

William Quiller Orchardson The Lyric, oil on canvas, 91cm x 77cm, (courtesy of Dundee Art Galleries and Museums)

What can we see? The protagonist is alone in a huge room, with a few props – a giraffe piano, an occasional table with some ornaments, two chairs, an urn on a pedestal, a sculpted bust, music scores and pieces of paper.

As with all of Orchardson’s society dramas, the action and the related props are positioned in a theatre-like space. There are great expanses of bare walls and floors.  The drawing room studio at 13 Portland Place, London, could be carpeted or stripped back to polished wooden flooring. Orchardson’s 1903 Royal Academy hit, ‘Mrs Siddons in the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds’, featured a crowd of party guests watching the protagonist dance with vigour and drama for their enjoyment on the same floor that is covered by a swirling floral patterned carpet in ‘The Lyric’.

Orchardson kept two pianos in his drawing room studio, and both featured in pictures. The giraffe piano is a character in ‘The Lyric’ itself. It towers over the protagonist, emphasising her scale and lack of significance. The piano looks powerful, strong and capable. She is the opposite.

If the McManus Gallery circumnavigators are going to be arrested for a moment at ‘The Lyric’ as they circle the gallery, it’s most likely to be through curiosity at this extraordinary instrument. Very few will have seen one in the flesh.

William Quiller Orchardson’s Giraffe Piano

When Orchardson left Portland Place in 1907, he donated the giraffe piano to the South Kensington Museum, and it sits now in the V&A London stores.  Here’s their description:

“This instrument was made in about 1820 by Corneille Van der Does (1769 - 1827), a piano-maker from Amsterdam. Owing to the shape of its case, this type of piano was known as a 'giraffe piano'. Like pianos being made in Vienna from about 1800, this example is fitted with a number of pedals, which, when depressed, could activate special musical effects such as drums and bells. It was used in popular arrangements of martial music. Case of mahogany, pinewood, oak and satinwood, partly solid, partly veneered; carved and gilt Corinthian column and lion monopods. Height: 214.5cm - Width: 146.2cm- Depth: 69.4cm”

Beyond its statuesque presence, the character of the piano reflects its silence, and perhaps its own helplessness. It offers no words, no tune. On its music stand appear a few ghostly sheets of paper, so diaphanous that you can see through the thin white gauze to the dark veneer on the wood. The keys of the piano seem shrouded in mist or cobwebs. These are sections of masterful painting technique.

The only sign of action or, rather, historical action, is the pile of loosely discarded scores on the floor beside the piano, with one caught at an angle by the leg of a neighbouring small table. There’s no knowing how long they’ve been there.

Apart from the young woman, the only life in the room is the little posy of flowers in the blue and white jug on the table. Everything is dead. Orchardson exaggerates the stasis, silence, and settlement through a technique that enabled him to manage atmosphere. He’s in control of the studio lighting and he’s able to capture light and shade, and subtle tonal variations without stressing any of the work or detail to the viewer.

William Quiller Orchardson The Lyric - Detail (courtesy of Dundee Art Galleries and Museums)

Orchardson’s work on ‘The Lyric’’s understated tone started when he set up the studio in 1887. Hilda described the process: ”The drawing-rooms were papered with a patterned gold paper over which was superimposed a matte-white painted pattern of Orchardson’s own design—a sort of fleur-de-lis, I think—through which the gold shone” (note 4).

Orchardson painted these huge expanses of wall with the same approach he took in all of his paintings: thin oil paint applied with brushes that carried very little load. His brush strokes on the walls were narrow parallel lines, irrespective of the size of canvas space he wanted to fill with that colour. Moreover, he would paint multiple layers lining up these almost transparent strokes on top of each other, whilst adding subtle colour changes to produce pattern, shadow, reflection, and modulations of light dispersal. Despite the multi-layered approach, and in some sections of the painting very dark shadow, at no point is the weave of the canvas covered. The paint sits inside its folds.

The society dramas are all theatre pieces, and are staged and lit artificially. Orchardson is producer, director, and head of casting, costume, scenery, and lighting. He is working in a theatre over which he has almost complete control: his own drawing rooms. He lives in his theatre and his studio, and observes visual cause and effect on a daily basis. He knows the quality of light produced by all of his tools and sets them up so that he can paint it as he sees it.

The vagaries of sunlight rarely figure. His floor to ceiling window (as depicted in ‘Her Mother’s Voice’ (1888)) is north facing into a relatively narrow street. Many pictures are set at night.

He has chandeliers; shaded overhead lights; unshaded wall mounted lamps; free standing lamps projecting light through frosted glass; multiple stemmed free standing candelabras; and heavy shaded table lamps, and those are just some of the many options shown in his pictures. Then there are mirrors and a skylight that Orchardson had created at the top of the window, which faced on to the narrow Devonshire Street, to bring extra light into the room.

In ‘The Lyric’ none of them are present, the machinery is all off-set. There is a light source above the young woman and to her left, throwing shadow on the right hand side of her face as she turns.

The same light source is creating a shadow on the wall to the left of the urn.

Light sources positioned above and behind the artist are creating a shadow under the protagonist’s chair, on the upper curves of the pots on the table, on the rim of the piano, mid-right and top-left, and on the wooden panel at the bass end of the keyboard.

The high light source is shaded such that reduced light is thrown on to the walls to the top and right of the picture, a diagonal from top left to mid-right that, along with the furniture placed back left in the scene, slightly counter-balances the piano’s powerful pull on the eye.

In 1904 Orchardson had been living and working in these rooms for seventeen years. The effects he painted are those he wanted. The positioning of the furniture, the model, and his easel are all planned into the lighting scheme.

Orchardson prepared for his pictures by drawing and, occasionally, making oil studies. Earlier in his painting career he drew on the canvas in advance of paint application. By 1904 he painted directly, with reference to the schemes in his drawings. He made a drawing of ‘The Lyric’ but it is not in the public domain, and I haven’t seen it. Hardie (note 5), discussing Orchardson’s preparatory methods, points out that in the drawing he made for his famous ‘Marriage de Convenance’, the main character does not feature, but “suggests Orchardson's primary interest was a certain effect of light.”

In ‘The Lyric’ he’s lighting a solo performance, but the care he takes with lighting effects underlines his interest in persuading the viewer to relax their focus on the young woman for a moment, see the secondary and tertiary level details, and admire the staging.

Without seeing the drawing, it’s impossible to conclude on whether Orchardson decided to deliberately shine such a strong light on what appears to be the bust of a head sitting under the piano. The instrument features in another picture, ‘Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory’ (1893), and there it’s plain to see that it’s not a bust, but is decorating the piano’s front legs. A picture of the piano itself shows identical moulds or carvings mounted on both of the monopods. Probably coincidentally, it does look remarkably like one of Orchardson’s near neighbours, popular poet and lyricist, Coventry Patmore.

William Quiller Orchardson Her First Dance - Detail ( courtesy of Dundee Art Galleries and Museums)

Back in the Gallery, looking above ‘The Lyric’ to ‘Her First Dance’, there’s another baby grand piano almost lost amongst the assembled onlookers to the main drama. Orchardson kept both of the pianos as scenery props/part of the furniture collection that was featured in various configurations throughout his studio painting career. He had a store of props and hundreds of costumes. The pink dress that the young woman in ‘The Lyric’ is wearing was worn by the lady sitting on the far right in ‘Her First Dance’ twenty years beforehand.

Orchardson loved Empire and Regency style furniture, and having it to hand, he could easily set up historical pictures. There’s no doubt that many of the dramas he staged would have been set up to employ specific pieces of furniture, including the pianos.

Music was a regular theme. Orchardson liked writing lyrics himself and sometimes wrote letters in poetic form. He played the violin in a string quartet in his youth, and his daughter reports that he could play the piano too, although she never heard him do so. He must have enjoyed reading verse, because he used it in picture titles on a number of occasions.

As already mentioned, his society dramas are often grouped into historical and contemporary. With the exceptions of specific historical subjects, notably Napoleon, there’s little difference in subject matter: they’re all incidents from fashionable society. The historical pieces give him the opportunity to distance himself and his viewers from the picture’s messaging, and the space to laugh at the old-fashioned society ways, but also to show off his historical staging skills. Well-researched works were much admired and Orchardson spent time at the V&A, and elsewhere, learning from and studying original sources.

‘The Lyric’ concludes both series. The young woman feels of the moment, but she’s wearing an old dress, and she’s in a room with old furniture. Orchardson’s arrangement, as always, feels completely natural.

There would be little point in getting all of the details right in the room without the intention to show them all clearly in the paintings, and Orchardson’s biographer, Walter Armstrong, stressed how important his ‘scientific’ observation and recording techniques are in producing the impact that he achieves by combining the truthfulness of his setting, objects and lighting effects with the emotional and dramatic content of his human characters.

Orchardson had a natural skill as a painter and draughtsman from an early age. It was recognised when he was in his mid-teens. His father, a tailor with his own business in Edinburgh, sent him to get a free art and design education at the Trustees Academy in 1845. He was thirteen.

The established orthodoxy is that the school was transformed when Robert Scott Lauder arrived as Master in 1852. Stanley Cursiter pointed out (Note 6) that prior to Lauder’s arrival, John Ballantyne, ”as a soundly trained artist with a practical knowledge of the properties of oils, pigments, and materials, was well fitted to give instruction on the purely technical side of the painter's craft. The importance of precise information on these matters is frequently overlooked in art teaching, so those students were fortunate in having Ballantyne's guidance, a fact which is reflected in the excellent preservation of most of their pictures”.

At this time, Orchardson would have seen and absorbed paintings by David Wilkie, first hand.  For many, Wilkie was his greatest stylistic influence. Not only did Orchardson’s compositions follow Wilkie’s example, but he learned from Wilkie to establish the important elements in a picture first. There are first hand accounts of canvases in Orchardson’s studio containing only fully painted eyes. The faces and bodies, settings, and lighting were all to be added later.

There are no first hand accounts from the artists who trained under Lauder. We have analysis of the common ground between Erskine Nicol, Thomas Faed, James Archer, Robert Herdman, and Alexander Fraser who were all older contemporaries of Orchardson when he started at the Trustees Aademy. Then we have the shared characteristics of Orchardson, Pettie, McTaggart, MacWhirter, Hutchison, Hugh Cameron et al from the post-Lauder period. We also have some words from John Pettie’s nephew, and head of graphic works at the V&A, Martin Hardie, on Lauder’s approach: "He taught his pupils that power of grouping, of seeing things broadly, of obtaining atmosphere and chiaroscuro, which is one common characteristic of their work. But he appears to have followed no cut-and-dried system, and to have no attempt to mould his students into any uniformity." It is generally held that Lauder thought skills with colour should be on a par with drawing aptitude.

Walter Armstrong says that he spoke to Orchardson’s peers: “The facility that marks Orchardson now (1896) was almost his from the first: feats which only became possible to his fellow-students after months of labour he mastered, those fellow-students tell me, in weeks… before he puts a touch upon the canvas he sees in his mind's eye the finished work”

Observation, draughtsmanship, perspective, colour harmony and tonality, compositional planning, and a focus on significance. These are the attributes that Orchardson took from his schooling, and a pool of artist friends who would interact with him for most of the rest of his career. Pettie was his closest friend and artistic sounding board until he died in 1893.

This is not the moment for a career survey. You can get that by combined reading of Armstrong, Hardie and Gray. Safe to say that Orchardson continued to learn and develop his technical and artistic skills throughout his working life, and that by the late 1880s he was completely at ease with his technique and looked to create an ease for his viewers, to let them engage with his pictures, giving them all the information that a naturalist would wish for.

By this stage of his career, Orchardson could have adopted what Zola proposed in his naturalist formula: art should be realistic and represent a study of human behaviour and psychology. Human characters should be flesh and blood; their motivations and actions rooted in the reality of their environment. Issues addressed should be meaningful and significant, and given priority, clarity and focus in the work.

William Quiller Orchardson The Lyric - Detail (courtesy of Dundee Art Galleries and Museums)

Let’s turn to the subject of ‘The Lyric’.

Hilda Orchardson Gray gives us some relevant context (Note 7):

“In 1903 he (Orchardson) was desperately ill at Hawley (his country house) and his life was despaired of. On his recovery we met on the stairs one day as he was going into the garden and he stopped me and said: ‘Oh, Hilda! I have faced death and find it to be nothing’.”

“He told my Uncle the same thing, so must have been thinking much on this subject. In a notebook of about that date I find the following thoughts: ‘The passing day to other eyes the dawning morn,’ and ‘The one conscious moment of existence. One short conscious step from one unconscious eternity to another.’ “

Hilda was the model for the young woman in ‘The Lyric’, but this is not a portrait of her. She has been asked to play a role. Let’s continue to call her the young woman and remind ourselves that the significant aspects of the painting are (1) she is alone (2) her facial expression, and (3) her body language. These are the meaningful elements. The rest is supportive material, aimed to convince of the veracity of the incident.

One of the reasons that painters avoid direct engagement from their subjects is to take themselves out of the picture. That also means they’re asking viewers to stand back. ‘The Lyric’’s power arrives with the realisation that she is not alone. The painter is there. You are too.  The painter’s and the viewer’s position are identified and she is looking straight at him and you.

Am I right? I check again and again. Yes, her head is angled as you would expect, her pupils steered towards the single point, her eyelids indicating that the height of the artist’s and viewer’s positions are the same as hers.

And what is she communicating? Her script is internal. Orchardson said that it’s the eyelids rather than the eyes that express feelings. If you put yourself in front of a mirror and compose your eyelids in the young woman’s configuration, without producing wrinkles around your eyes, then take all the tension out of your lips – they need to rest without pressure – what do you feel? Empty, careless. Open your mouth like the young woman is and you might exhale as though you’re exhausted.

This is an expression that’s almost impossible to offer without feeling the emotions. Orchardson has been painting emotions through faces and bodies for most of his career, with his viewers assuming clever direction, acting and observation. When onlookers are outside the frame, they observe without engagement. In these circumstances they can even watch unspeakable horror without personal distress.

In a world where society aimed to ignore uncomfortable questions, Orchardson made a very comfortable living, setting out many of society’s own inadequacies, but in such a way that his viewers, and buyers, could enjoy the result. He made constant statements about the shallowness of life, but did so with such ambiguity, and such bravado, that his core message was disguised or coded or seen to represent ‘other’ people. He smothered his examination of life’s realities in costume clothing.

But, before ‘The Lyric’, Orchardson had not faced death and found it to be nothing. ‘The Lyric’ gives the central character of a long-standing drama series an opportunity to speak directly to her audience. It’s her final speech. But she’s exhausted. Look at her hair. She’s not been sitting here composing lyrics, she’s not even been thinking, she’s been partying, with her best frock and fascinator. She’s been racing through the social whirl of society life, birling on dancefloors, pretending to be an actress performing in front of Joshua Reynolds, she’s seen off many admirers, emerged triumphantly on her own from a line of crossed swords, she’s consistently been an enigma, and here she is to tell you that it was all for nothing. Her hair is ruffled, she’s exhausted, and it wasn’t worth it.

Right from the start, she was left sitting alone by the tide of the social eddy. She’s always stood apart, sometimes awkward, sometimes aloof, but always standing off. She’s earned the right to have an independent voice.

She walked out on us before (in the ‘The First Cloud’), but that was acting. Here she’s facing us and it’s for real. It’s the end, and she’s mute.

Note 1: William Hardie,  Sir William Quiller Orchardson, Scottish Arts Council Exhibition Catalogue, 1972

Note 2: Walter Armstrong, The Art Of William Quiller Orchardson, 1895

Note 3: Orchardson left paintings unfinished at his death, including “The Last Dance”, bookending the parties and multiple character society dramas; and “Solitude”, taking the young woman out of her anguish in “The Lyric” and placing her slightly older persona into a state of resignation sitting alone in a carriage.

Note 4: Hilda Orchardson Gray, The Life of Sir William Quiller Orchardson, 1930

Note 5: Hardie, 1972, p.11

Note 6. Stanley Cursiter, Scottish Art, 1949, Chapter 16

Note 7: Gray, p.246