Andrew Lambirth

Jokes and bitterness

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It certainly demonstrates that he’s still not taken particularly seriously by the art establishment, which has perhaps never really forgiven him for being so successful in his lifetime. As the press release reminds us, Orpen was ‘probably the most famous painter in Britain’ when he died. And yet there has never been an Orpen solo show in any of our national galleries. Why? True, he was not avant-garde in any noticeable way, pursuing instead a broadly realist course in the tradition of Vel

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