O’Conor
Roderic
Breton Boy in Profile 1893
Oil on board.
Signed top left ‘O’Conor 93’.
38.1 x 44.5 cm (15 x 17 1/2 in.)
Provenance
Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Vente O’Conor, 7 February 1956; Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London;
Drue Heinz, purchased April 1957.
Probably Salon des Indépendants, Paris, 1893, no. 962 Gamin; Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London, Roderic O’Conor paintings; collectors’ drawings, 19th and 20th century, 1957, n° 17.
Jonathan Benington, ‘From Realism to Expressionism: the early career of Roderic O’Conor’, Apollo, April 1985, p. 156-7 (reproduced); Jonathan Benington, ‘Thoughts on the Roderic O’Conor exhibition’, Irish Arts Review, summer 1986, p 57 (repro), 59; Jonathan Benington, Roderic O’Conor, a biography with a catalogue of his work, Dublin 1992, p. 52-3 (repro), 193, n° 32.
A major and rare painting by the Irish artist Roderic O’ Conor, this Breton Boy in Profile was painted in 1893 in Pont-Aven where the artist, who had been trained academically in Dublin, Anvers and Paris, became a key member of the artist’s colony settled there and developed a new, radical style. The dark outlines, painterly gesture and violent colours shows his talented and personal interpretation of Gauguin’s synthetism and Van Gogh’s hallucinatory works. His expressive painting style was greatly admired by his contemporary fellow artists in Pont-Aven, such as Cuno Amiet, Charles Filiger and engraver Armand Seguin among others.
Sold to the Musée d’Orsay.