
She was his lover and his model and Sir William Orpen kept this portrait of Yvonne Aupicq as a nun in his own collection. It comes up as lot 61 at the James Adam sale of Important Irish Art in Dublin on March 1 with an estimate of €30,000-€50,000. Adams understand that Yvonne had met Orpen while working as a nurse during the war. He had been admitted to hospital with a suspected case of scabies which ended up being a far more serious case of blood poisoning as he recounts in his wartime memoir ‘An Onlooker in France’. Their relationship continued after 1918 when Orpen was appointed as the official artist to The Paris Peace Conference. He gifted to her another version of this portrait with Yvonne set against a completely white background.