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Roderic O'Conor RHA (1860-1940)

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:50,000.00 - 60,000.00 EUR
Roderic O'Conor RHA (1860-1940)
Roderic O'Conor RHA (1860-1940) WOMAN IN A TURQUOISE CARDIGAN, HOLDING A BOOK stamped 'atelier O'CONOR' on reverse of stretcher oil on canvas 61 by 49.5cm., 24 by 19.5in. Provenance: Studio of the artist, sold Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 7 February 1956; Taylor Gallery, London. Exhibited: 'Irish art in the 20th century', Taylor Gallery, London, 1 June - 31 July 1989, catalogue no. 23; 'A Celtic Summer', Taylor Gallery, London, 1 June - 31 July, 1992, catalogue no. 21. Literature: Jonathan Bennington, Roderic O'Conor: a Biography, with a Catalogue of his Work, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1992, p.215, catalogue no. 214. This serene and carefully observed portrait is one of a pair devoted to the same sitter, a young woman wearing a turquoise cardigan. The smaller version is a head-and-shoulders portrait showing the model's face in semi-profile. In this larger, half-length version she is viewed full face, holding a book in her left hand. The contours and features of the woman's face have been subtly evoked by means of the lighting which, unusually for O'Conor, enters the room from both sides of the composition. Thus the centre of the woman's face and neck are framed by bright highlights, giving her skin a radiance which is lacking in the smaller version of the portrait. The lighting of the figure from both sides raises the question: where was this picture painted? It can not have been done in O'Conor's Paris studio since it had windows along one wall only. The house the artist owned at Nueil-sur-Layon, Maine-et-Loire, might be a possibility, however he did not purchase the property until 1933, which would mean the picture would have to be a later work than was previously thought.. This theory is lent credence by the fact that the sitter's dress and hairstyle are consistent with fashion of the mid-1930s. The care that O'Conor lavished on this portrait prompts comparison with certain of his portraits of Breton women. The beginning and end of his spell in Brittany, namely 1891 and 1903-4, were marked by a number of highly wrought and beautiful depictions of the opposite sex.. 'Portrait de bretonne' of around 1891 recalled the artist's training in Antwerp and his exposure to the work of the Dutch old masters. 'Young Breton Girl' of 1903 represented a young girl in mourning clothes and was donated by the artist to the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin. This moving picture with its classically constructed composition was a far cry from the daring modernist statements O'Conor had painted in 1892-94. And yet, the artist clearly made a conscious choice to be represented by such a conservative work in a new museum of modern art. In some respects, the gift was indicative of a reigning-in of the experimental urge during the second half of his career. Intimiste interiors and landscapes aside, the paintings of O'Conor dating from the 20th century are essentially realist in their approach. 'Woman in a turquoise Cardigan' exploits to the full the amazing capacity of oil paint to capture an illusion, just as 'Young Breton Girl' had done at the start of the century. Both pictures even adopted the same symmetrical arrangement of the figure within an equilateral triangle. Unlike the Breton girl, however, the more mature sitter of the later portrait does not quite meet our gaze. She preserves her feelings, quite possibly in deliberate denial of conventional expectations. This stark objectivity marks the painting out as highly typical of its time, for many artists had embarked on a return to traditional values following the war of 1914-18 Jonathan Benington Cheltenham, April 2002€50000-€60000 (IR £39000-£46800 approx.)
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