Roderic O'Conor 1860-1940

Jonathan Benington, Roderic O'Conor, a Biography with Catalogue of his Work, Dublin 1992, no.217;
Dominic Milmo-Penny and Daniel Fennely, Roderic O’Conor Private View, Dublin 2001, no.12, p.50, illustrated p.51.

Female models abound in the later work of Roderic O'Conor, when he was working out of a studio-cum-flat in the Montparnasse district of Paris. Most of these pictures showed the figure placed in an interior setting, with accompanying props of furniture, ceramics and coloured drapes. It was comparatively rare, however, for O’Conor to adopt a sufficiently close-up view of the model for it to function as a portrait. The present picture is so carefully studied and thoughtfully coloured – with its complimentary swathes of crimson and green, yellow and purple – and the model’s features bear so much resemblance to other images of Renée Honta, that it can only be a portrait of her. 

Renée Honta (1894-1955), credited by Clive Bell as having been “a charming and gifted lady“, is said to have “mitigated the painful loneliness” of O’Conor’s old age. Early in their relationship he wrote her a series of tender love letters, addressing her as “my dear little friend.” Renée came from Pau in the Basses Pyrenées and arrived in Paris as a young woman, aspiring to be a painter whilst working part-time as an artist’s model. It was doubtless her modelling that brought her into contact with O’Conor during the First World War. She became his mistress and learnt to paint under his guidance (the green over-garment she wears in La blouse verte, with its rolled-up sleeves, looks like an artist’s smock). She married him in 1933 and cared for him when his health started to decline. On his death in 1940 she inherited a life interest in his property, his investments and the extensive contents of his studio. A photograph of her taken during the 1930s shows the same rounded face and shoulders, the same prominent features and bushy hair as are captured in the present work.

In La blouse verte the twenty-five year old Renée looks directly out of the picture, confidently returning the painter’s gaze, her head inclined to one side allowing it to rest on the extended fingers of her right hand. The light from an adjacent window throws the figure into sharp relief, making her sleeve, hand, neck and face stand out as the brightest parts of the picture. The dark shadows running down her right cheek and along the line of her raised arm give the figure a presence that is almost sculptural. This effect is further enhanced by the dense build-up of paint, which must have necessitated a prolonged period of gestation in the studio, given that each layer had to be allowed time to dry before the next one could be applied. The result is as textured and rich an impasto as can be seen in any of O’Conor’s intimiste nudes from the previous decade.

La blouse verte was one of five paintings O’Conor exhibited at the 1920 Salon d’Automne. The fact that his other four submissions were still lifes suggests that the picture, rendered unique owing to its figurative content, was one that gave him particular satisfaction.

Jonathan Benington