Chance find of Orpen war letters

A CHANCE discovery in the files of a Dublin solicitors’ firm has revealed first-hand accounts of one of Ireland’s most famous artists about the horrors left in the trenches of World War I.

The National Library will display the 10 letters from William Orpen to his father next March, including three written during his time as an official British war artist at the western front in France.

In a three-page letter, dated July 25, 1917, he describes a fright he got during a visit to a trench where he was painting the remains of a German and an English soldier, with skulls, bones, clothes, rifles and water bottles lying around.