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Lot Essay
'This painting lay dormant in the collection of an American painter living in Paris for much of its history, was sold on her death and not recognised as a seminal early work of Roderic O'Conor until now. It is thus appearing in the public arena for the first time in over a hundred years. The original signature has been overpainted, and examination by ultra-violet light suggests that the crude capitals may overlay the original, correctly spelt name, but that apart, the canvas has all the hallmarks of a fully resolved landscape dating from the first year of O'Conor's experimentation with a 'striped' application of paint. This phase in his work lasted from 1892 to 1894 and was inspired more by the works of Van Gogh than by those of O'Conor's immediate circle, the painters of the Pont-Aven School.
The re-emergence of Paysage, Pont-Aven increases the number of extant 'striped' landscapes painted by O'Conor from six to seven. Four are in public collections in London, Belfast, New York and Auckland, leaving just three in private ownership. The last occasion any of the seven was auctioned was over forty years ago, at the 1956 Atelier O'Conor sale in Paris. This picture belongs to a small number of works which the artist allowed to leave the studio during his lifetime, unlike the vast majority of his output which was not dispersed until 16 years after his death.
The events of the year 1892 combined to make it the most aesthetically adventurous in O'Conor's entire career. In the early months of the year, ensconced in the Breton town of Pont-Aven, O'Conor painted still lifes and figure subjects in an idiom that still recalled the realism and Impressionism of his work from the late 1880's. He needed to develop a more up-to-date style that reflected his recent change of surroundings and would earn him the respect of his new peer group - the progressive followers of Gauguin. The impetus came from a visit he made to Paris in March 1892, the prime purpose of which was to deliver work to the Salon des Independants exhibition. While there, he was also able to visit the Retrospective Exhibition of paintings by Van Gogh at the Gallery of Le Barc de Boutteville. This show was organised by Emile Bernard and included several landscapes from the Dutchman's St. Remy period. O'Conor was totally bowled over by the work, which he would later describe as 'wonderful expressions of character pushed to the point of hallucination'. With remarkably advanced taste, he grasped the pioneering nature of the Dutchman's work, and he did so within just two years of his death. It would be a decade and a half before Van Gogh's work had any following in Britain and Ireland.
The discovery that painting could legitimately abstract the colours and forms of Nature in order to facilitate a more direct expression of feeling must have pointed the way forward for him, sealing his conversion to Post-Impressionist practice. Upon his return to Pont-Aven in May, he was ready to set to work on paintings which would be totally unlike anything he had produced previously. The short stabs and streaks of pigment that he had used a few months earlier, very much as an extension of Pointillist mark-making, now gave way to a Van Gogh-derived 'stripe' which would become his trademark for the next two years. The process, as it was applied to landscape painting, may have been helped on its way by 'the sharply coloured field patterns of the Breton landcape', as they were described by O'Conor's friend, the artist Armand Seguin.
O'Conor exploited the stripe for its abstract, decorative and expressive qualities. He frequently applied his colours in their pure, unmixed form, direct from the tube. Contrasting tints were made to vibrate by virtue of their close juxtaposition. Applied boldly to a landscape, the sweeping, rhythmic lines conveyed a sense of the invisible forces at work in Nature - the ripening of a field of corn, the bowing of trees by strong winds, and other manifestations of the cycle of growth and decay. However, by inventing his own expressive vocabulary he had not lost his respect for the broad shapes, forms and colours of the world around him.
This landscape must date from after the artist's return to Pont-Aven, quite possibly June 1892, a time of year which would be consistent with what appears to be a pile of freshly cut hay in the centre foreground of the picture. The effect the picture gives of contrasting areas of sunlight and shadow, and the combinations of colours deployed within each area, are strongly reminiscent of his painting The Glade (Museum of Modern Art, New York), which also bears an 1892 date. In both pictures, a combination of yellow, white and pink stripes denotes pools of sunlight, whereas bright red, green and light blue are reserved for cast shadows and silhouetted forms. The staining visible on the reverse of the canvas that Paysage, Pont-Aven is painted on suggests that it took shape out-of-doors, the main areas of colour being laid on with thin washes. Thicker paint was then added, wet-on-wet, and studio work may have been limited to a reinforcement of some of the stripes after the underlying paint layers had dried.
The setting for Paysage, Pont-Aven is most likely the Derrout- Lollichon fields adjacent to the Manoir de Lezaven, looking down into the Breton town and across to the Colline Ste. Marguerite on the far side of the river. Despite its proximity to Pont-Aven, the area had an air of quiet seclusion which was greatly appreciated by O'Conor and by Gauguin before him. The latter used part of the Lezaven farm as his studio in 1889, then five years later he and the Irishman both had the use of it when they were at last able to make each other's acquaintance. There is some irony in the fact that one of O'Conor's most Van Gogh-inspired landscapes was painted on the site which would witness his burgeoning friendship with Gauguin, which would lead in turn to the elimination of the stripe from his work'.
(Jonathan Benington, private correspondence, January 1999).
Caption:
The Interior of Gauguin's Studio, Manoir de Lezaven, Pont-Aven, 1991.
The re-emergence of Paysage, Pont-Aven increases the number of extant 'striped' landscapes painted by O'Conor from six to seven. Four are in public collections in London, Belfast, New York and Auckland, leaving just three in private ownership. The last occasion any of the seven was auctioned was over forty years ago, at the 1956 Atelier O'Conor sale in Paris. This picture belongs to a small number of works which the artist allowed to leave the studio during his lifetime, unlike the vast majority of his output which was not dispersed until 16 years after his death.
The events of the year 1892 combined to make it the most aesthetically adventurous in O'Conor's entire career. In the early months of the year, ensconced in the Breton town of Pont-Aven, O'Conor painted still lifes and figure subjects in an idiom that still recalled the realism and Impressionism of his work from the late 1880's. He needed to develop a more up-to-date style that reflected his recent change of surroundings and would earn him the respect of his new peer group - the progressive followers of Gauguin. The impetus came from a visit he made to Paris in March 1892, the prime purpose of which was to deliver work to the Salon des Independants exhibition. While there, he was also able to visit the Retrospective Exhibition of paintings by Van Gogh at the Gallery of Le Barc de Boutteville. This show was organised by Emile Bernard and included several landscapes from the Dutchman's St. Remy period. O'Conor was totally bowled over by the work, which he would later describe as 'wonderful expressions of character pushed to the point of hallucination'. With remarkably advanced taste, he grasped the pioneering nature of the Dutchman's work, and he did so within just two years of his death. It would be a decade and a half before Van Gogh's work had any following in Britain and Ireland.
The discovery that painting could legitimately abstract the colours and forms of Nature in order to facilitate a more direct expression of feeling must have pointed the way forward for him, sealing his conversion to Post-Impressionist practice. Upon his return to Pont-Aven in May, he was ready to set to work on paintings which would be totally unlike anything he had produced previously. The short stabs and streaks of pigment that he had used a few months earlier, very much as an extension of Pointillist mark-making, now gave way to a Van Gogh-derived 'stripe' which would become his trademark for the next two years. The process, as it was applied to landscape painting, may have been helped on its way by 'the sharply coloured field patterns of the Breton landcape', as they were described by O'Conor's friend, the artist Armand Seguin.
O'Conor exploited the stripe for its abstract, decorative and expressive qualities. He frequently applied his colours in their pure, unmixed form, direct from the tube. Contrasting tints were made to vibrate by virtue of their close juxtaposition. Applied boldly to a landscape, the sweeping, rhythmic lines conveyed a sense of the invisible forces at work in Nature - the ripening of a field of corn, the bowing of trees by strong winds, and other manifestations of the cycle of growth and decay. However, by inventing his own expressive vocabulary he had not lost his respect for the broad shapes, forms and colours of the world around him.
This landscape must date from after the artist's return to Pont-Aven, quite possibly June 1892, a time of year which would be consistent with what appears to be a pile of freshly cut hay in the centre foreground of the picture. The effect the picture gives of contrasting areas of sunlight and shadow, and the combinations of colours deployed within each area, are strongly reminiscent of his painting The Glade (Museum of Modern Art, New York), which also bears an 1892 date. In both pictures, a combination of yellow, white and pink stripes denotes pools of sunlight, whereas bright red, green and light blue are reserved for cast shadows and silhouetted forms. The staining visible on the reverse of the canvas that Paysage, Pont-Aven is painted on suggests that it took shape out-of-doors, the main areas of colour being laid on with thin washes. Thicker paint was then added, wet-on-wet, and studio work may have been limited to a reinforcement of some of the stripes after the underlying paint layers had dried.
The setting for Paysage, Pont-Aven is most likely the Derrout- Lollichon fields adjacent to the Manoir de Lezaven, looking down into the Breton town and across to the Colline Ste. Marguerite on the far side of the river. Despite its proximity to Pont-Aven, the area had an air of quiet seclusion which was greatly appreciated by O'Conor and by Gauguin before him. The latter used part of the Lezaven farm as his studio in 1889, then five years later he and the Irishman both had the use of it when they were at last able to make each other's acquaintance. There is some irony in the fact that one of O'Conor's most Van Gogh-inspired landscapes was painted on the site which would witness his burgeoning friendship with Gauguin, which would lead in turn to the elimination of the stripe from his work'.
(Jonathan Benington, private correspondence, January 1999).
Caption:
The Interior of Gauguin's Studio, Manoir de Lezaven, Pont-Aven, 1991.