Le Chef de l'Hôtel Chatham
William Orpen , 1921
127 × 102.5 cm
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Arts , London
Le Chef de l'Hôtel Chatham is a painting by William Orpen from 1921. The 127 × 102.5 cm picture, painted in oil on canvas, shows a chef at the Paris Hotel Chatham. It belongs to the collection of the Royal Academy of Arts in London .
Image description
The picture shows a half-length portrait of a cook, almost life-size. He stands in front of the viewer, has his hands on his hips, turned his head to the left shoulder and focused his gaze on a point outside the right edge of the picture. It is not just the title of the painting that reveals the profession of the sitter. His clothes also leave no doubt about his profession. He wears work clothes that are customary for a chef to this day. The white chef's uniform stands out against the monochrome black background. These include a long-sleeved shirt with a double row of buttons in front of the chest, a scarf knotted around the neck, an apron tied around the waist and the obligatory chef's hat on the head . Added to this are the objects arranged in a still life, which are located on a table top at the bottom of the picture. On the right there is a towel with a knife on it, two slices of raw meat lie directly in front of the cook and on the left edge of the picture is a filled wine glass and a bottle of red wine. Light reflections can be seen at the neck of the bottle, which can come from a window or another light source. The way of painting is in the tradition of academic art of the 19th century and is partially photographically accurate.
In addition to the profession, which is known from the clothing, the props and the picture title, the viewer learns little about the person portrayed. A wedding ring on a finger of the left hand gives an indication of social status. The posture and facial expression suggest a self-confident man who is around 30 years old. A well-groomed full beard adorns the face very dominantly. The blonde beard hair is also shaped into a horizontally protruding mustache . Little of the head hair peeks out from under the chef's hat. The skin of the face is slightly red and shiny, possibly due to work in the kitchen. Whether Orpen intended to portray an individual person or a typical representative of a profession remains unclear in view of the missing name of the person depicted in the picture title.
Background to the creation of the painting
Orpen was a sought-after portrait artist in London even before the First World War . During the war he visited the French front as an official war painter , painted the war events and created numerous portraits of members of the military. Even after the war he stayed frequently in France and had his own apartment in Paris. On behalf of the government he created various pictures during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and during this time frequented the restaurant of the Paris Hotel Chatham, which was particularly popular with English and American journalists. The Sous Chef of the hotel was Eugène Gross Riether, who by his nickname Chester was known. His colleagues named him after the Chester cheese because he disliked any cheese. In the restaurants was Chester especially for its grilled dishes such as steak and Côte Lette known that he prepared in front of guests. Accordingly, Orpen placed such pieces of meat in front of the cook in the picture. The fame of Chester depicted in the painting by British journalists frequenting the pub may have played a role in the later positive assessment of the picture by the English press.
Orpen repeatedly found models for his paintings in painters such as Diego Velázquez or Édouard Manet, and the type of portrait Le Chef de l'Hôtel Chatham with its portrayal of people against a black background is reminiscent of these artists. On the other hand, the motif of a cook as a subject can be found in some other artists. In the 19th century , the Frenchman Augustin Théodule Ribot created a series of genre pictures in which a cook is featured. His painting The Cook and the Cat (private collection), for example, shows a scene typical of the painter with a cat stealing a fish from the cook. Claude Monet painted the portrait Der Koch in 1882 ( Österreichische Galerie Belvedere , Vienna) without any such borrowings from genre painting . With the loose brushstroke of Impressionism, Monet fuses the sitter with the background, and unlike Orpen, he foregoes the addition of a still life with props in the foreground. Orpen's meticulous painting in the academic tradition in the Chef de l'Hôtel Chatham does not care about the artistic trends of his time. This becomes clear not only in comparison with Monet's painting, which was created almost forty years earlier, but is particularly noticeable when compared with contemporary art. In 1922 Chaïm Soutine created Le Petit Pâtissier ( Musée de l'Orangerie , Paris) , another chef whose expressive painting style, however, is far removed from the realistic depiction of Orpen. Le Chef de l'Hôtel Chatham contributed to William Orpen's success as a portrait painter, and in the following years famous personalities like the British Crown Prince Edward were portrayed by him.
Augustin Théodule Ribot:
The cook and the cat
Claude Monet:
The Cook
Chaïm Soutine:
Le Petit Pâtissier
Provenance
Orpen exhibited Le Chef de l'Hôtel Chatham shortly after its completion in April 1921 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The press was positive about the picture and a purchase for the Tate Gallery was considered. For this purpose, foundation funds from the estate of the sculptor Francis Leggatt Chantrey , the Chantrey Bequest, were to serve, on which the board of the Royal Academy of Arts had to decide. Before that, however, Orpen was asked where the painting had been made, as the donor had decreed that his inheritance could only be used to purchase works of art that were created in the British Isles. Since Orpen stated that the picture had been partly painted in Paris, the purchasing committee decided instead to use another painting by Orpen, the portrait of Sir William McCormick from 1920. Orpen handed over to Le Chef de l'Hôtel Chatham in 1921 as a so-called diploma work to the Royal Academy of Arts. Orpen had been a full member of the Royal Academy of Arts since 1919 and the free handover of a work of art as a diploma work is one of the admission rules of this institution to this day.
literature
- The French Chef in the Royal Academy. In: The literary digest, a repository of contemporaneous thought and research as presented in the periodical world , Volume 69, Funk & Wagnalls, New York 1921.
- Robert Upstone: William Orpen, politics, sex & death . Philip Wilson, London 2005, ISBN 0-85667-596-2 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The spelling varies between Grossriether and Grossrieter. See Robert Upstone: William Orpen, politics, sex & death , p. 29.