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15.
WILLIAM CONOR RHA PRUA OBE (1881-1968)
The Apple Seller
Wax crayon on card, 48 x 36cm (19 x 14”)
Signed
€15,000 - 20,000
‘William Conor…is worthy of respect, not only as our senior painter, but as, in many ways, the most representative. Conor began exhibiting in 1911 and since then has followed a
consistent course, drawing his material from his own place….His chief virtue is a fundamental sincerity: he paints as he feels; if the emotion be powerful the work will correspond…
Stylistically he is no man’s disciple, having forged his own idiom from his personal vision and experience.’ (Hewitt, 88-89)
Described as ‘the people’s painter,’ William Conor fittingly began his art engagement at the age of ten on the streets of his native city of Belfast. ‘He had been ‘discovered’ by a
friendly music teacher, Louis Mantell, who found him sketching on a wall as he waited for the end of a friend’s music lesson.’ (Snoddy, 75). He went on to train at the Government
School of Design in 1894 and continued to sketch prolifically throughout his life. He carried his sketchbook in his pocket at all times and in 1923 Conor wrote that he was accus-
tomed ‘to note down any little happening which strikes me as interesting and significant.’ Within this range of sketching output, street scenes of Belfast predominate. Conor was
equally comfortable in depicting single figures, two-person and three-person groups in his sketches, drawings and paintings. He also depicted larger groups and all his figure stud-
ies captured their subjects in activities of various types – playing, dancing, selling or skipping, for example, with a lively and gregarious air of enjoyment. He was a highly perceptive
and sympathetic chronicler of the people of Belfast and has endured as the city’s most popular fine art exponent. It is interesting to note his early employment as a poster designer
with David Allen & Sons, lithographers. He worked in this position for five years and it is certain to have influenced his ability to portray a scene powerfully within the confines of the
page or canvas. He exhibited with the Belfast Art Society, the Royal Academy and the Royal Hibernian Academy. His representation at the latter was sustained and formidable, over
200 works during the period 1918-1967.
As a practitioner he has been credited with many positive attributes honesty, integrity, sincerity and clarity in his depictions of the people and places that surrounded him and in
his portrayals of the scenes he encountered as he explored his habitual urban environs. His work is readily identifiable and relatively unique in its sustained engagement with a city
and its people. In Ireland’s Painters, it is observed that Conor’s approach to his chosen medium was one that was wholly his own; ‘His early crayon drawings, with their very person-
al technique, using wax to achieve an uneven texture, develop from his early training as a lithographer and he achieves something of the same effect in oils.’ (Crookshank and Glin,
289). ‘The Apple Seller,’ wax crayon on paper, sees Conor create an interesting pair, the older lady with slight smile depicted in an assured pose with her arm around the relaxed
smiling child by her side. Her other hand rests upon the basket of apples in the foreground. The portrayal is aesthetically pleasing, certainly, but it invites the viewer to engage fur-
ther in its narrative strand – to consider the fruit seller, her trade in the city, and an occupation to be passed on to future generations. Conor employs some of his common pictorial
devices – a pared down background to minimise distraction from the figures and the heavy black outlines of the figures that confidently announce their presence. Conor has been
described in the Ulster History Circle’s ‘Dictionary of Ulster Biography’ as an artist who ‘raised the art of crayon drawing to the level of genius.’ This mastery of medium is clearly
evident in works such as ‘The Apple Seller,’ where the texture and colour gradations, capture an astonishing atmosphere in terms of its depth. This atmosphere is heightened by the
texture of material, lifelike flesh tones, light and shade, nostalgia and narrative. These nuances are all determined by the remarkable potential of this medium in the right hands.
Marianne O’Kane Boal
Martyn Anglesea, William Conor – The People’s Painter, 1999
Jonathan Bell, Conor – Drawing from Life, Appletree Press, 2002
Sam Hanna Bell, Ed., The Arts in Ulster, ‘Painting and Sculpture,’ by John Hewitt, 88-89.
Crookshank and Glin, Ireland’s Painters 1600-1940, Yale University Press, 2002
Theo Snoddy, Dictionary of Irish Artists – Twentieth Century, Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1996
Brendan Rooney, A Time and a Place: Two Centuries of Irish Social Life, NGI, Dublin, 2006