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Roderic O’Conor (1860-1940)
Landscape with Garden and Mountain (1913)
Oil on board, 38 x 46cm (15 x 18¼”)
Atelier stamp verso
Provenance: Vente O’Conor, Seán Ó Criadáin, from whom purchased in 1978 by John P. Reihill, Deepwell, Blackrock, Co. Dublin
Literature: Roderic O’Conor, Jonathan Bennington, 1992, No. 175, p.211
This lively and colourful painting of modest proportions is one of a num-
ber which O’Conor painted in 1913 when he was living in a rented villa in
the small fishing port of Cassis, to the east of Marseille in the Départment
of Bouches du Rhône. O’Conor had not exhibited any landscapes since
his return to Paris from Brittany in 1904 and it was probably the case that
he felt a compelling need to return to subject matter which had been his
primary interest, indeed his passion, in earlier years. After two separate
visits which took him out of France to Italy in 1910 and to Spain in 1912,
O’Conor moved temporarily from his Montparnasse studio to spend the
summer of 1913 painting in Cassis.
The villa which he rented there was a two-story residence situated on a
narrow street in the old part of the town, set on a hill leading up from the
port.The house backed onto a garden surrounded by a high wall, and there
was a balcony at the rear of the villa which afforded a fine view over the
rooftops of the houses further down the hill, towards the Bay of Cassis
and the Mediterranean beyond. To the east of his villa the terrain rose
more dramatically, ending in a rocky ridge which overlooked the port and
swept down to the coast, forming a headland cliff almost 400 metres high
where it reached the Mediterranean. Known as Cap Canaille, it was then,
and still is, the highest sea cliff on France’s coastline.
With such a dramatic background feature it is no surprise to find that
the ridge appeared frequently in O’Conor’s paintings that year, and that
it is included in this painting as a purple mass in the background. The
Mediterranean environment clearly enriched O’Conor’s colour range as it
had done for painters such as Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck, who became
known as the Fauves when their work was grouped together with others in
the Salon d’Automne of 1905.The rich foliage and bright flora of this re-
gion, and the piercing southern sunlight of summer, made a direct impact
on their perception and use of colour in their paintings. In O’Conor’s case
his colour range in this painting has been enhanced through the interplay
of purple and warm orange/yellow pigments, with red and green broken
brush strokes interspersed with blue marks. His painting technique com-
bines a rich variety of brush marks and dabs which he has applied ener-
getically with some mixing directly on the canvas. In other paintings from
his summer in Cassis a sense of touch and an exploratory and slightly hes-
itant contact with the canvas is reminiscent of Bonnard’s technique, and
he, rather than the Fauve painters, may have been the stronger influence
on O’Conor’s work at this time.
There is also a second and somewhat larger painting known as
Le Cap
Canail
which has a definite relationship through its composition and
colour to this work.
Landscape with Garden and Mountain
may have been
a preparatory work for this larger painting, but equally, the enlarged scale
of some of its brush marks, particularly on the background mountain,
could also suggest that the painting was done in the studio from memory
or from reference to the smaller work.
The Bonnard influence may also be seen in at least three further paint-
ings, none of which were exhibited at the Salon d’Automne that year. but
which are very Bonnard-like in their treatment. Although one of these
works is known by its ascribed title
Brittany Coastline
, its colour range,
technique, and topographical details link it directly to the Cassis paint-
ings.
Landscape
, is even closer to Bonnard’s style when compared with the
brushwork details of his
Nu à Contre-Jour
of 1908, which was exhibited
by Bernheim-Jeune the year after it was painted. Bonnard had in fact
been among the exhibitors at le Galerie de le Barc de Boutteville in the
6th and 7th exhibitions of Peintres Impressionnistes et Symbolistes in
1894. O’Conor was also among the exhibitors, so he would have had some
acquaintance with Bonnard’s work from that date.
These more “colourful” pictures of O’Conor’s also probably owe some-
thing to his change of environment and subject matter, from studio based
still life and interiors to a return to the landscape in search of new themes.
The clear light of the Midi and the hot Mediterranean sun which dried
out the landscape had made this environment an attractive one for the
Fauve influenced painters.The intense colours were pushed to extremes of
brilliance and purity by the Fauves, who may have influenced O’Conor to
experiment with enhanced colours in this painting.
Dr. Roy Johnston
€35,000 - 45,000
