Master Of Colour

An exhibition reveals how one of Irelands greatest painters, RODERIC OCONOR , was nearly lost from art history. JENNY WHITE explains

- Jenny White

It’s every art lover’s dream: in 1956, the renowned London art dealer Henry Roland attended an auction of paintings by an obscure artist, Roderic O’Conor. Left behind after the death of his wife, many of his paintings were unceremoniously offered in laundry baskets in lots of four or five at a time. Nobody else was paying much attention but Roland was entranced, recalling later that he was “overwhelmed by their beauty”. He went on to buy a generous amount of the paintings, and his efforts in exhibiting them are arguably the reason O’Conor is recognised today as one of Ireland’s greats.

Despite that, the current exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland is the first major show of the artist’s work in more than 30 years. It’s a precious chance to see a significant body of O’Conor’s paintings in context, displayed alongside work produced by his more famous contemporaries, and to understand the artistic styles he absorbed and made his own.

A wealthy Irishman, O’Conor turned down the expected educational route to university. Instead he studied at the Metropolitan School of Art and the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, and then headed to Europe, enrolling at the Académie Royale de Beaux-Arts in Antwerp in 1883, before arriving in Paris in 1886. Here, he enrolled at the Atelier of Émile Auguste Carolus-Duran, an advocate of direct painting, whose former pupils included John Singer Sargent.

He went on to immerse himself in the artists’ colony of Grez-sur-Loing, to the south east of Paris, where he was struck by the Impressionists’ mastery of light, colour and atmosphere. The painter responded with a distinct, energetic approach that bordered on Expressionism, laying down paint thickly with both brushes and knives.