• Kenneth McConkey
  

• William Orpen
  

• 
  Winter 2026
  Volume 43. No. 4

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At the hands of a brute with a hammer, an old nag, pulled in from the quays, has met its maker. A couple of fellows, one poking the carcass with a stick, the other with arms and legs akimbo, condone the act. The horror of it all means nothing to the mangy hound that sits regally observing the scene, and which will no doubt be a beneficiary of the carve-up. Above the action, like tattered standards from a long-forgotten war, rags are hanging out to dry under a warehouse gibbet and, over the arch, washed by the weather, is a crude, degraded armorial. This is William Orpen’s The Knacker’s Yard, Dublin – one of his most evocative and carefully conceived paintings (Fig 2). Loosely based on the Merchants’ Arch leading from Dublin’s Temple Bar to the River Liffey, Orpen reduced its height and created a yard from what was and remains a narrow passageway. Although the proportions are much closer to the original in a drawing of two years earlier (Fig 1), Orpen’s introduction of a proscenium or second arch curving the top corners of The Knacker’s Yard makes theatre of the scene and separates it from reportage of the kind we would expect from Walter Osborne, for example. Sarah Purser proposed its purchase from Captain R Langton Douglas on 4 April 1934 for £400. Langton Douglas originally paid the artist £250. Despite the fact that Douglas’ purchase is recorded for 1915, the work was reported sold in 1911.

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