Sir William Orpen N.E.A.C., R.A., H.R.H.A. (Irish, 1878-1931) The Winner (The Champ) signed and inscribed 'ORPEN. DUBLIN' (lower right) pencil, watercolour and white chalk 76 x 53.8 cm. (29 7/8 x 21 1/8 in.) Footnotes: Provenance The Artist's Studio Book, 1924, where purchased by John McCormack for £50, from whom inherited by His son; Count Cyril McCormack Thence by family descent to the previous owner Mary Hobart, London Exhibited New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Recent Works by William Orpen, 1914, cat.no.12 (as The Winner) Buffalo, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Albright Art Gallery, Recent Works by William Orpen, 1914, cat.no.11 (as The Winner) London, New English Art Club, Summer Exhibition, 1923, cat.no.170 (as The Winner) Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, Sir William Orpen, Centenary Exhibition, 1978, cat.no.226 (as The Champ) London, Imperial War Museum and Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, William Orpen: Politics, Sex and Death, 2005, cat.no.95, p.145 (col.ill.) London, Pyms Gallery, Lines from Nature and Memory, Works on Paper, 2011-12, (unnumbered, cover ill.) Literature William Orpen 'Drawings', Art Criticisms, 1914, (privately printed, Charles Chenil & Co, Chelsea), pp.4,5 & 7 'The 3 'A's', The Daily Mirror, 2 June 1923, p.7 'The New English Art Club', The Scotsman, 2 June 1923, p.9 'New English Art', The Yorkshire Post, 2 June 1923, p.10 J. B. Manson 'Some Drawings by Sir William Orpen', The Studio, October 1923, Vol.86, no.367, pp.187 (col.ill.) & 189 For James Bolivar Manson, artist and Keeper at Tate Gallery, writing in 1923 Orpen's natural ability as a draughtsman was his handicap. He was 'like a miner who struck a vein of gold at the first attempt', and although he surveys the best of the artist's pre-war works in the graphic media, Manson sees no development. At that moment, the 'Monarro Group' painter was still struggling to come to terms with Impressionism and Orpen's supreme self-assurance in the use of line seemed like a trap. Yet even within Manson's reproductions, the important distinctions between the Rembrandt-esque and the Ingriste, taking in other developments along the way, went largely ignored. The draughtsman may be highly schooled, but he was never slick. The most arresting of Manson's eight selected illustrations was that of the present drawing. Unlike most others in the article, this study of a boxer, his left arm raised in triumph, was highly finished – so much so that the 'winner' seems identifiable. Yet although various names have been proposed – that of 'Cyclone' Billy Warren, a well-known Dublin character, seems most likely (although there is no supporting documentary evidence, contemporary photographs of Warren tend to confirm this identification; see https//cometomehere.com.>2013/10/08>cyclone-billy-warren). Fights nevertheless interested Orpen and back in July 1910, he had wagered £4 on the outcome of the World Heavyweight Championship between Jack Johnson and James J Jefferies. The present drawing relates to another carefully drawn three figure composition entitled The Boxer, circa 1913, and both describe the moments immediately following a 'knock-out'. In a letter of that year to the dealer, William Marchant, (Hyman Kreitman Archive, Tate), Orpen proposed bringing both 'Victor' and 'Vanquished' together in a single composition, but this was unrealized (Orpen would of course return to the ringside in Fair at Neuilly: Man versus Beast, 1925 (Private Collection). In 1913, however, he informed Marchant that his idea was to represent 'The Spirit of Boxing: The Victor and the Vanquished'. However, before this occurred, events in the year leading up to the outbreak of war, intervened and the Winner drawing was selected as one of ten to be reproduced in photogravure facsimile, in a special portfolio published by Chenil Gallery. In this context it stood alone and appears unrelated to the Howth and other loosely autobiographical or family drawings in the group. It is nevertheless, much more than a simple figure study redolent of the studio or the life room. Frank Rutter, reviewing the portfolio in The Sunday Times, declared that it 'impressed one by the force with which the muscular strength and fitness of the negro champion are suggested ...' while a writer in The Daily Graphic found that 'the brutal but virile black boxer, The Winner, is what an artist would call the most 'stunning' of them all ...' The exposure of this magisterial drawing and its subsequent showing in New York, may well have blunted Orpen's ambition to paint the great 'knock out' picture, as he embarked on the third of his celebrated 'Irish Trilogy' – Nude Pattern: The Holy Well (National Gallery of Ireland). The story goes that ten years later, when sitting for his portrait, Count John McCormack saw the drawing and offered Orpen £5 for it. The painter then replied, 'If you add a nought to it, you can have it', and the singer did so (quoted in Pyms Gallery, 2011-12, p.33). Back in 1913 however, when boxing was establishing itself as a sport, and its origins in the 'prize-fighter' fairground side-show were still obvious to all, the idea of depicting a popular mass entertainment greatly appealed to Orpen. Connections with American painters, Thomas Eakins and George Bellows may seem obvious but, given than neither had a profile in Dublin, or London at the time, are unlikely. The pugilists, treated by William Nicholson in his woodblock series, Almanac of Twelve Sports, 1897, would certainly have been known to Orpen. However, Orpen's treatment of the 'champ', for all Manson's niggles, stands out as iconic. In all its anatomical accuracy and the beauty of the line with which it is conveyed, the artist has indeed struck 'a vein of gold'. We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for compiling this catalogue entry. 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