ART AND LEVERHULME.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 704, 3 February 1922, Page 6

ART AND LEVERHULME.

DISPUTE WITH ORPEN. HALF-LENGTH HALF-PRICE. Lord Leverhulme, who a year ago was burned in effigy in Hyde Park by Chelsea art students after his mutilation of his portait by Mr Augustus John, is again the discussed man of the moment in the London world of artists, this time on account of a new portrait by Sir William Orpen. Last year Lord Leverhulme summarily reduced the Augustus John portrait, flipping out the head and returning the rest of the canvas to the painter. Over /the new portrait —representing him in mayoral robes, for presentation to the town council of Bolton —the question at issue is ine price. Lord Leverhulme agreed to pay 3000 guineas for a full-length standing portrait. He was persuaded by Sir William Orpen to be depicted sitting, for artistic considerations . The portrait finished and dispatched to Bolton, Lord Leverhulme surprised the painter by offering him half the named sum, since, sitting, he occupies less space on the canvas than saccording to the pose originally suggested. Sir William protested.. The area of his accomplished painting, he penis cut, is no less through the change pose. As much paint and varnish has been used. Lord Leverhulme answers with a suggestion of arbitration, and Sir David Murray, the veteran landscape artist is to decide the point,. The portrait, which measures 6ft 3in by 4ft 9in, and is described by the Bolton town clerk as a speaking portrait of Lord Leverhulms, is at present in the packing case in which it was dispatched from London, said an artist, “makes a landmark in the history of portrait painting, and lit is extremely stimulating 'that at his late day a problem so totally fresh should arise. From the time of Apeßes, some 2300 years ago, down to ton-day, I think there is no recorded custom of a sitter paying for a portrait by a scale based on the proporion between his person and the accessories in the picture. “The Leverhulme case will no doubt have far-reaching results. Such a picporftra.it of the Prince of Wales may be now considered as belonging to an already bygone genre. The Prince in that picture occupies an almost negligible area—at a guess I should say one-twentieth of the whole. The rest is merely filled in with a horse, an oak tree, a landscape, and so on. “It simply will not be worth an artisjt’s while in the fuure to paint portraits on that scale. Why, even if he ‘works in’ some surrounding accessories just for hi's own amusement he risks having it all trimmed down by the patron, and ,the ‘edges’ sent back home to him. But art thives on difficulties, and it wil be stimulating to see a new school of portraitpainters develop who shall contrive to put down the whole of their parons and nothing but their patrons on the canvas.”