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Roderic O’Conor (1860-1940)
Le Châle Bleu or The Blue Shawl (1920-21)
Oil on canvas, 64.75 x 54.5cm (25½ x 21½”)
Signed. Atelier stamp verso. Inscribed on middle bar of the stretcher, ‘No.3 Roderic O’Conor ‘Le
Châle Bleu’
Exhibited: Paris, Salon d’Automne, 1921 (1778)
Provenance: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Vente O’Conor, 7 février 1956; with Blache, Versailles, 16
December 1973 and 28 April, 1974: Roland, Browse and Delbanco, London: Mr. J. P.
Reihill,Deepwell, Blackrock
Literature: Roderic O’Conor, 1860-1940, by Jonathan Benington Cat. No. 231 p.218,
Dublin,1992.
In the Salon d’Automne exhibition of 1921, Roderic O’Conor showed a group of five paintings,
three of which were still lifes. His other two exhibits were especially interesting because of their
subject matter. One was this portrait of a quite meditative Renée Honta and the other was a rather
unflattering self-portrait in which O’Conor depicted himself as a full length figure, standing at his
easel and looking very much his age, which was then sixty-one. It was the first and only occasion
on which O’Conor showed two distinctly different and separate paintings of himself and his
youthful mistress in the same exhibition, thereby drawing attention to the considerable difference
in their ages. As was often the case with O’Conor, his motives on that occasion were not clear.
For this sensitive portrait of Renée Honta, O’Conor chose to seat her close to the studio window,
which was the main light source in his Montparnasse studio. Her serene and rather contemplative
expression suggests that O’Conor worked on the portrait over a period of time and may have
required more than one sitting in order to achieve a good likeness. The palette knife technique
which he has used throughout the painting gives the work a special character and relates it back
to much earlier portraits of Breton peasants which he painted during his first visit to Pont-Aven,
circa 1887.
O’Conor’s ability to successfully manage and control the thickly applied paint in this portrait
shows his considerable versatility and skill as a painter, a characteristic of his working methods
which impressed his closest friends. As he progressed into the 1920’s his subject matter changed
and he painted a series of ambitious still life paintings in which he further refined and developed
his palette knife technique to emphasize the play of light and shade, as he demonstrates in this
painting.
Dr. Roy Johnston
€20,000 - 40,000
