Artist Information
Attribution
Sir William Quiller Orchardson, HRSA, RA (1832-1910)Role
PainterDate made
circa 1890Time Period
19th CenturyNotes
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Sir William Quiller Orchardson was a noted Scottish portraitist and painter of domestic and historical subjects. He studied at Edinburgh's renowned art school, the Trustees' Academy, after which he worked in the city and in 1862, at the age of thirty, Orchardson moved to London. For the next twenty or so years Orchardson continued painting, and in 1870 he spent the summer in Venice, traveling home through a France overrun by the German armies. In this year he finished building Ivyside, his house at Westgate-on-Sea with an open tennis-court and a studio in the garden.
Orchardson's wider popularity reportedly dates from 1880. To that year's Royal Academy summer exhibition he sent the large “Napoleon on board the Bellerophon”, which was acquired for the national collection. He followed up with “Voltaire” at the Academy of 1883, viewed perhaps as his high-water mark. Of note, the scene is based on a real incident capturing a dramatic moment in the French satiricist Voltaire's quarrel with the chevalier de Rohan-Chabot. This was followed by a number of successful submissions, and he completed a number of distinguished portraits. The major commission received by Orchardson as a portrait-painter was that for the Royal group of Queen Victoria with her son (afterwards King Edward VII), grandson and great-grandson, to be painted on one canvas for the Royal Agricultural Society. Orchardson continued painting to the end of his life, and had three portraits ready for the Royal Academy in the final year of his life.
