Roderic O'Conor

The artist's studio, sold Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 7 February 1956;
Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London;
Gorry Gallery, Dublin;
Dr. Michael Wynne, Dublin;
Adams, Dublin, 26 May 2005, lot 87, where purchased by the present owner

London, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, Roderic O'Conor, 1961, no.14;
London, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, Roderic O'Conor and Norman Adams, 1964, no.2;
Sydney, David Jones' Art Gallery, Matthew Smith and Roderic O'Conor, 1965, no.14;
London, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, Roderic O'Conor, A Selection of his Best Work, 3 June - 10 July 1971, no.30;
Cork, Crawford Municipal School of Art, Irish Art in the 19th Century, 1971, no.105

Jonathan Benington, Roderic O'Conor, A Biography with a Catalogue of his Work, 1992, p.206, no.135, illustrated p.116

The canvas has not been lined. There is some surface dirt. Otherwise the work appears to be in excellent condition. UV light inspection reveals some very minor spots of retouching along the lower and upper right hand framing edges, a few minor flecks to the pink/white areas of impasto near the upper right edge. Held in a hand painted wooden frame (possibly original).
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Roderic O’Conor was one of the most experimental artists of his generation. He was in the fortunate position of having private means, which meant that he never had to compromise his art in the service of market forces. He could also afford to be relaxed about exhibiting his work in public. The only critic he had to please was himself, and while his development can be broken down into a series of different styles, each of which was radical in its own right, periodically he sought to raise his art by pushing his analysis of colour and form that bit further. Seated Nude against Orange is such a work, loosely related to what he was doing around 1911-13, but in many ways as daring a statement as his Breton seascapes had been fourteen years earlier. O'Conor's selection of props for this painting also says something about his progressive taste as a connoisseur and collector.

As far as its subject matter is concerned, Seated Nude against Orange can be compared most closely with a nude O'Conor painted in 1911, Bleu et rose. In that work the figure adopted a similar pose with her arms resting on a divan piled high with colourful drapes.  But here the similarities end, for the stylistic idiom of Bleu et rose was still one of understated washes of colour that relate harmoniously to one another. Seated Nude against Orange, on the other hand, has a much more powerful presence due to its expressive handling of paint, its wilful distortions of form, and its emotionally charged colours: strident yellow, orange, red, purple, green and blue. It is a determinedly contemporary statement, reinforced by the abstract textile the artist has chosen to drape behind the figure, its brightly coloured squares and diamonds echoing the sharp angles of the model's pose. The placement of the head of the nude directly in front of the green lozenge reinforces this feeling of modernity, implying that the artist's manipulation of observed reality in the service of design overrides the need to represent it literally.

Although the textile has affinities with some of Sonia Delaunay's designs, the precise  source has yet to be found. The figure, on the other hand, has a more traceable lineage: the extreme simplification of the face, especially the diagonal hatched marks used in the shadows, recalls the primitivising characteristics of early Cubist nudes such as Pablo Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon. O'Conor respected the Cubist master and even mentioned him in one of his letters, reporting from Paris to Clive Bell that "Your friend Picasso is booming they tell me." (26 February 1925, OCCB 11, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin). At the same time O'Conor's deployment of a flattened surface design, a fauvist palette and sumptuous fabrics brings the work of Henri Matisse to mind, whilst the use of outline to reinforce the edges of the colour zones evokes Georges Rouault (with whom O'Conor served on the jury of the 1907 Salon d'Automne).

Ultimately, however, Seated Nude against Orange is not a response to any specific artist or style, but rather a personal contribution to the ferment of experimentation that was a hallmark of the Parisian art world in the years leading up to the First World War. Most of the artists engaged in that movement were twenty or so years younger than O'Conor, yet clearly he kept an open mind about the various modernist styles and no doubt saw their adherents as fellow crusaders in the advancement of art.

Jonathan Benington