William Orpen, The Yacht Race (Sighting the Boat), c. 1913,
Every summer between 1902 and 1914 William Orpen returned to Ireland to teach at the Metropolitan School of Art. He rented a house on the coast at Howth, where he had grown up and where this watercolour was painted.
Orpen’s capabilities as a draughtsman were almost as renowned as those of Augustus John, being similarly well-practiced and informed by a rich sense of art’s history. In The Yacht Race and other tinted drawings made at Howth, Orpen showed men, women and children engrossed in leisure pursuits; these relaxed figures, often barefoot, were drawn in precise, sparing outlines.
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‘The view looking towards the mainland in the evening, from the top of the Hill of Howth, is wonderful and
ever-changing’, Orpen wrote in his memoir, Stories of Old Ireland. ‘Of an evening, as the sun dips, the water
of the bay becomes brilliant gold [...]. And the Sheerwater gulls start their laughter, like a bunch of young
girls at the side of a road laughing at the passers-by. Ireland! Romance, laughter, and tears!’
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