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| The Prince of Wales |
| Sir William Orpen (1878 - 1931) |
| 1927 |
| Oil |
| Edward Prince of Wales (1894 - 1972), later Edward VIII, became Captain of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club in 1922. The third royal to captain the club, the twenty eight year old Prince played golf with a 15 handicap. Prior to his captaincy, the Prince had studied briefly at Oxford before entering service in the army. In 1914, he was commissioned in the Grenadier Guards, but was prohibited from fighting on the front line following the outbreak of the First World War. Instead, Edward spent most of the war abroad seeking to serve his country by working to raise troop morale. In the years following the war, he continued to spend much of his time abroad, making official visits to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, America and other countries.
As expected, the Prince's captaincy of the Club created a huge demand for attendance at the club's annual ball and medal competition. On 27th September 1922, around 6,000 people turned up to watch the Prince of Wales drive in as Captain by hitting a shot from the first tee of the Old Course. When he played in the club's medal competition later in the day, crowds of around 10,000 turned out to watch the popular royal compete. Whilst in St Andrews, Edward also received an honorary degree from the University of St Andrews and the Freedom of St Andrews from the Town Council. To mark his year as Captain, Edward gifted a Silver Club to the Club, the third in a collection dating from 1754.
The R&A decided to honour their royal Captain by commissioning a portrait of him. Sir William Orpen (1878-1931), an Irish born artist, agreed to undertake the commission. Orpen was a prominent artist and prolific portraitist, painting around 600 portraits during his career. He was particularly well known for his service as an official war artist. Orpen went to France in 1917 as a major in the Royal Army Service Corps.
Orpen had attended the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin at an early age, before enrolling at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Afterwards, he briefly opened a teaching studio with Augustus John in Chelsea and began to exhibit at the New English Art Club. Although he devoted much of his later career to portraiture, the war years saw Orpen produce works that expressed much about the horror of war, many of which are now in the Imperial War Museum, London. He was also the official artist present at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Orpen received a K. B. E. in 1918 for his work as a war artist and was elected to the Royal Academy the following year.
Orpen agreed that his fee for the portrait would be 'whatever sum was raised amongst the members, but that he hoped it would be in the neighbourhood of £1,000.' The club sought to raise £1,000 through members' subscriptions. Appeals for funds were made in 1924 and 1925, by which time the portrait, commissioned in 1922, was still not complete. In November 1925, correspondence between the club, the artist and the Prince of Wales' secretary, suggests that the portrait was delayed because of the difficulty in arranging meetings with the Prince. The artist had also struggled to arrange a sitting where the Prince could pose for a photographer. In addition, the Prince suffered the loss of his grandmother, Princess Alexandra, in 1925.
The completion of the portrait was to be delayed for yet another reason. In 1927, Sir William Orpen wrote to the Club to inform them that he was dissatisfied with the portrait. The artist offered either to refund £500, half of the commission fee, or be given the opportunity to modify the painting until he was satisfied with it. Orpen was asked to continue working on the portrait and by September 1927, it was complete.
The portrait shows the Prince of Wales dressed in fashionable golfing attire. Although the club had requested that the Prince pose in the traditional Captain's red coat, his preference was to be shown wearing a knitted sweater and plus-fours. Apparently, the Prince greeted the portrait with the comment that 'It's a very nice picture of a pair of shoes'. Today, the portrait hangs in the Big Room of the Clubhouse.
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