Praying

Conor was born in Belfast, the son of a sheetmetal worker. In 1904 he joined the lithographers, David Allen & Sons, where he was an apprentice poster designer, moving on after five years to travel around Ireland, and to Paris. He first exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Gallery in 1918, as well as contributing to exhibitions in London and Dublin throughout the 1920s. After travelling to America, Conor became one of the first nine academicians when the Belfast Art Society became the Academy of Arts in 1930, completing the then largest mural in Ireland in 1932 for the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery depicting Ulster Past and Present. He was appointed an associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1938, becoming a full member in 1946. He exhibited with the Victor Waddington Galleries in the 1940s and was active during this period as a portrait painter. He was honoured by C.E.M.A. in 1957 when they produced the largest retrospective held in the province at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, in the year in which he was also elected President of the Royal Ulster Academy, an office which he held until 1964.
(see T. Snoddy, A Dictionary of Irish Artists 20th Century, Dublin, 1996, pp. 75-77).