The Dead Ptarmigan (Self-Portrait) – William Orpen

The Dead Ptarmigan, A Self-Portrait (c.1909) – William Orpen

Orpen painted himself holding a dead bird and called it a self-portrait. That tells you everything about him.

The Dead Ptarmigan was painted around 1909, when Orpen was at the peak of his reputation — the most in-demand portraitist in the British Isles, earning more than almost any painter of his generation. He could have painted himself in a studio, brush in hand, the picture of success. Instead he chose this: a limp ptarmigan, a direct stare, the whole thing drenched in the tradition of Dutch vanitas painting. He insisted the subject was Irish, writing to fellow artist William Rothenstein that "we grow ptarmigans in the West."

It is a painting about mortality, about the gap between reputation and reality, about what it means to be Irish and successful and slightly apart from it all. The original hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland.

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

• 20 × 25 cm / 8 × 10″
• 40 × 50 cm / 16 × 20″
• Available unframed

Print Details

Archival matte paper, 250gsm (110lb), acid-free and FSC-certified — off-white, uncoated. Unframed prints up to A4 ship flat; larger sizes ship rolled in a protective tube.

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