Title - Girl in a Blue Hat

Artist - Sir William Orpen

In 1912, Orpen produced 'Girl in a Blue Hat' , as part of a series of portraits depicting Vera Brewster, the wife of the writer Joe Horne, who wrote a biography of WB Yeats. She was the niece and ward of the Shakespearean actress, Julia Marlowe, and after their marriage in 1911 they moved into a house in Chelsea beside the Orpens. In 1913 they moved to Dublin and raised a family there. Orpen continued to paint a series of works with Mrs Brewster.

Opren painted so many works with her that he ran out of titles and began calling them ‘Mrs Hone Number Four’ and so on.