RODERIC O'CONOR | Red Rocks, Brittany

The artist's studio sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 7 February 1956;
Galerie Zak, May 1956;
Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London, sold to a private collector December 1960;
John Heather, 2000;
Gorry Gallery, Dublin

Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum, A Century of Irish Painting: Selections from the Brian P. Burns Collection, 3 March - 29 April 2007, illustrated p.86

The board appears sound. Small pinhole in upper right corner. Crease in lower right corner. Small horizontal surface abrasion, approximately 3cm long, near the lower right hand corner; Otherwise the work appears in good overall condition, with strong passages of impasto. Under UV light there seems to be no sign of retouching. Held in a gilt composite frame, ready to frame.
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The composition of this work relates to that of a larger O'Conor seascape, Red rocks and Sea that is signed and dated 1898 (sold in these rooms, 23 May 2013, lot 67). The latter work takes a more wide angle, less close-up view of the same subject and is overall darker in tonality, whereas the rocks to the right in the smaller painting glow orange and pink, lit up by ray of sunlight entering the composition from the left. The two spumes of foam indicate that the conditions otherwise are quite choppy. The Irishman’s close friend, the artist Armand Seguin was impressed by the originality of this body of work. On 15 May 1899 he wrote to O'Conor urging him to exhibit the entire seascape series as a distinct body of work: “I fully approve of your change of scenery. I realise you have ‘gone to hell’, putting up in a hotel next to a lighthouse with two million candlepower…. Your art will benefit from this move, in any case you must have had a wonderful display this month if the storms in Paris were anything to go by…. What particularly pleases me, and here I am completely in agreement with you, is that you worked hard on these paintings and put your all into them…. I envy your love and don’t doubt your great success at your chosen time.” 

Jonathan Benington