Roderic O'Conor

Roderic O'Conor (17 October 1860 – 18 March 1940) was an Irish painter Spending much of his later career in Paris and as part of the Pont-Aven movement, O'Conor's work demonstrates Impressionist and Post-Impressionist influence

Born in Milltown, Castleplunket, County Roscommon, Ireland, O'Conor attended the Metropolitan School and Royal Hibernian Academy early in his career He studied at Ampleforth College, and like his classmate, Richard Moynan, travelled to Antwerp before moving to Paris to gain further experience While in France, he was influenced by the Impressionists

He then decided to acquire further experience by going to France When he came to Paris and fascinated by impressionist painting, he did not take much to decide that the best point of reference was Paul Gauguin and his group of friends and students who, crossing the limits of Impressionism, were experimenting with his overcoming

He reached Pont-Aven in Brittany, where he worked closely with Gauguin himself, with Émile Bernard, Armand Seguin, Paul Sérusier and other members of the "school" He then went on to post-impressionist painting expressing himself with many personalities and often experimenting with new compositional modes and new techniques He exhibited for several years at the Autumn Salon

O'Conor got a remarkable inspiration from Van Gogh's pictorial trait (see, for example, Yellow Landscape and The Girl Who Remembers) and the often daring chromaticity of the various painters of the Pont-Aven school, but apart from these wholly technical influences , His works always show a particular and distinct personality

Roderic O'Conor studied painting from the early years, attending the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, then the Royal Hibernian Academy , then passing to Ampleforth College in Yorkshire and finally at Académie Royale des Beaux Art of Antwerp

In 1883 he also traveled to the south of France, between Nice and Marseilles, where he made several landscapes, marinas and portraits inside

In 1892 O'Conor went to Pont-Aven in Brittany where he worked closely with a group of artists around the Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin, whom he befriended His method of painting with textured strokes of contrasting colours also owed much to Van Gogh His nephew, Patrick O'Connor (1909–97), was also a painter as well as a sculptor

Moreover, O'Conor brought almost every kind of subject onto the canvas: portraits, naked, groups of people, landscapes, still life

In his old age he married his model and lover Renée Honta

O'Conor died eighty years at Nueil-sur-Layon, a village in Maine-et-Loire, in 1940

O'Conor died in Nueil-sur-Layon, France in March 1940

In March 2011 a work by O'Conor sold for £337,250 (€383,993) Landscape, Cassis, an oil-on-canvas, was painted by O'Conor in the south of France in 1913 and sold at Sotheby's for significantly higher than the estimate price

Works:
His method of painting with textured lines of contrasting colors also owes much to Vincent Van Gogh

Young man with white jacket, oil on canvas, size: 73 x 60cm, bears the stamp of the workshop on the back, comes from the old collection of the Petit Palais de Genève4

On the Shore, Aberystwyth (ca 1895)
Bretonne (about 1890)
Bretonnes au Pouldu (circa 1893-1895, charcoal on gray paper, museum of fine arts of Quimper)
Wheat field at Pont-Aven (ca 1894)
The farm of Lezaven5
A young Breton woman (1903, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery in Dublin)
Boulevard Raspail (1907, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery in Dublin)
Nu (about 1910)
In March 2011, a work by O'Conor was sold for £ 337,250 (€ 383,993): Landscape, Cassis (oil on canvas), painted by O'Conor in southern France in 1913 and sold by Sotheby's for A price significantly higher than the estimate price
https://hisour.com/artist/roderic-oconor/