Sunlight – William Orpen Art Print

Orpen painted Sunlight in his London studio in 1925. A woman sits on a sofa in a shaft of afternoon light, lifting her stocking — a green roll garter, fashionable in the 1920s, on her arm. The light falls across her skin, the upholstery, and the painting on the wall behind her. The painting is in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland.

That painting behind her is Monet's The Seine at Marly. Orpen owned it — he had bought it years earlier and it hung in his studio, a reminder of where modern painting had come from, present in the background of his own work like a quiet acknowledgement.

Sunlight is not a grand statement. It is a painter in his late forties, at the end of a career that had taken him from Dublin to the Slade to the Western Front to Versailles, finding something worth painting in a woman on a sofa on an ordinary afternoon. The light does the rest.

Sir William Orpen (1878-1931), born in Stillorgan, Co Dublin, trained at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and the Slade School in London, becoming one of the most successful portrait painters of his generation. His work hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Sizes & Format

• 30 × 40 cm / 12 × 16″
• 60 × 80 cm / 24 × 32″
• Unframed in every size; framed in black, white or wood at 30 × 40 cm, 60 × 80 cm and 45 × 60 cm

Print & Frame Details

Archival matte paper, 250gsm (110lb), acid-free and FSC-certified — off-white, uncoated. Framed prints: solid oak or ash wood frame, 20mm thick, with shatterproof protective glazing. Ready to hang, hanging kit included. Unframed prints up to A4 ship flat; larger sizes ship rolled in a protective tube.

Free Worldwide Shipping

Framed prints are packed with protective corners and wrap, boxed with reinforced edges, and braced with internal supports for extra rigidity (max 3 frames per package). Every order ships free, made to order and delivered from the hub closest to you: Ireland 3–7 business days · UK 4–8 · USA 5–10 · Canada 6–12 · Australia 7–14.