The Ford - A mountainous river landscape with a figure with a wagon and horses at a ford

A preparatory drawing for this composition is dated 1830 (see J. Hutchinson, op.cit., no. 69). Not having prospered sufficiently in Dublin, O'Connor had left Ireland for London in 1822 where he exhibited at both the Royal Academy and the British Institution, also sending works to the Royal Hibernian Academy. Although living in London he paid a number of visits to Ireland and many of his subjects were still Irish, and as he wrote in a letter to John Gibbons (dated August 1830) he continued to find inspiration in the 'wild and beautiful scenery of my native country'. The present composition with the wagoner, his horses and wagon dwarfed by an awe-inspiring landscape shows his interest in Romanticism. John Hutchinson (op.cit.) comments that it is 'as if O'Connor were trying to represent the daunting and apparently insurmountable difficulties in his own life'. The present picture can be compared to his A Thunderstorm; The Frightened Wagoner (National Gallery of Ireland), one of his most celebrated and Romantic compositions, which shares the motif of the driver, wagon and horses set in an overwhelming landscape, and which it would appear to predate.