ADAM'S - Important Irish Art Auction - 31st May 2017 (Click Lot title for more images and to Place Bid)

Oil on board, 54 x 48cm (21¼ x 19”)

Atelier stamp

Provenance: Vente O’Conor, Hotel Drouot, Paris 7 February 1956; with the Solomon Gallery, 1982 (Label verso);

Christies, London, 8 June 1984, Lot 100, where purchased by current owners.

Exhibited: The Solomon Gallery, Dublin (label verso)

This lively and expressive painting by Roderic O’Conor is revealing of his appreciation and understanding of the

pictorial possibilities inherent in the simplest of landscape themes. A narrow swirling river, a cluster of saplings

centrally placed on a river bank, and a receding meadow leading to a distant line of trees have been brought

together in this vigorously painted and colourful work.

What distinguishes this painting is O’Conor’s technical bravura through which he has resolved the work, apparently

without any traditional preliminary drawing. His method has been to use a range of brushes of different sizes, each

well charged with oil paint, and successfully integrating drawing and painting within the one activity. The painting

gives no specific clues as to its location, although the flatness of the receding field and the painter’s position close to

the river bank is suggestive of a wider river valley or landscape through which this rather agitated river is moving.

There is a possibility that this could be a tributary of the river Loing some distance downstream from the village of

Grez-sur-Loing to the south of Paris, where O’Conor was a frequent visitor and resident in the popular artists’

colony. As the river drops on its way to Montigny it gathers momentum on its approach to a large weir which spans

the river and which is a well known feature of the river at that point.

When originally surveyed in 1982, the painting had a Robinot Frères label on the back (which is no longer there)

giving their business address as 91 bis rue du Cherche-Midi, just a few yards from O’Conor’s studio at 102 rue du

Cherche- Midi, which he acquired in 1903. The firm of Robinot Frères specialised in packing goods and

merchandise, and it could be that O’Conor had a neighbourhood client who bought the painting from his studio sale

in 1956 and had it prepared and protected for shipping with Robinot Frères.

Roy Johnston, May 2017

€ 15,000 - 20,000