A Life With Art: The Collection of Mollie and Graham Dark

In William Orpen’s portrait, Mrs Evelyn St George cuts an extraordinary figure that owes almost as much to her milliner as to the artist. Her form, anchored by a large fur muff and tapestry ‘carpet’ handbag, is topped by a magnificent oversized hat crowned with a mountain of ostrich feathers – a deliberate challenge to the painter. Framing the delicately observed face, for an ordinary painter, it would threaten to destabilise the figure. While the sitter may have encouraged him to court such danger, Orpen instinctively knew what he was doing in artfully arranging the folds of the silver backdrop to ensure compositional equilibrium was retained in what must be one of his most dramatic formal arrangements. - Kenneth McConkey

Sir William Orpen, R.A., Mrs. Evelyn St George

Paintings by L.S. Lowry

Auction Highlights

London

Deputy Chairman UK, Head of Modern British & Irish Art

André Zlattinger

Director, Head of Sale, Modern British and Irish Art

Bryn Sayles

Director, Senior Specialist, Modern British & Irish Art

Jen Hardie

Director, Specialist, Modern British and Irish Art

Nicholas Hemming-Brown

Tamsin Golding Yee

Senior Director | Head of Sotheby's Ireland

Arabella Bishop

Meet our Specialists

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We are delighted to present our Modern British &amp; Irish Art Evening Auction. This auction features lots which span the full century covered by this period, from the elegant and sophisticated turn-of-the-century portrait of Mrs Evelyn St George by Sir William Orpen, dating from 1906–14, to Frank Auerbach’s Albert Street, which was executed in 2009. Come and discover a century of the best of Modern British &amp; Irish Art at Sotheby’s this November.

Modern British & Irish Art Evening Auction