Roderic O'Conor 1860-1940

Given by the artist to his friend Francis-Brook Chadwick at Grez-sur-Loing, and thence by descent to his grand-daughter, Madame Corinne Colomb, from whom purchased by the present owner, November 1983

London, Barbican Art Gallery, Roderic O'Conor, 1860-1940, 12 September - 3 November 1985, with tour to Belfast, Dublin and Manchester, 1985, no. 3, illustrated in the catalogue;
Dublin, Hugh Lane Gallery, Frank O’Meara and his Contemporaries, 1989, no. 22, illustrated in the catalogue;
Dublin, Hugh Lane Gallery, The O'Conor Room, loan exhibit, 1995-2000;
Limerick, The Hunt Museum, Roderic O'Conor, Shades of a Master, 2003, no.1.

May Brawley Hill, ‘Grez-sur-Loing as an Artists’ Colony’, unpublished paper, City University of New York, 1983, page 18;
Jonathan Benington, ‘From Realism to Expressionism, the Early Career of Roderic O'Conor’, Apollo, April 1985, pp.253 and 255, illustrated;
Jonathan Benington, Roderic O'Conor, A Biography with a Catalogue of his Work, Dublin, 1992, pp.27-28, 34 and 189, no. 4, illustrated in colour;
Roy Johnston, Roderic O’Conor / Vision and Expression, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1996, pp.22-23, illustrated.

This briskly worked painting by Roderic O'Conor, signed and dated 1886, marks an important milestone in the history of Irish art as it is the earliest identified work by an Irish artist which shows a direct influence from the French Impressionists.   Indeed, it also assumes even greater significance when viewed in a wider context as the earliest Impressionist painting by any English speaking artist.  The painting was given the title Groupe de Peupliers. Effet de soleil by its owner in 1983 and exhibited as such in the O'Conor retrospective exhibition in 1985.  O'Conor did exhibit a painting in the 1889 Salon des Indépendants  with this title, but without a confirming inscription or label on the painting we cannot be certain that it is the work in question. The alternative title Autumn Landscape  given in 1992, has been based on a visual assessment of its subject matter. 

It is likely that O’Conor left Dublin for Paris shortly after the conclusion of his year of free study at the Royal Hibernian Academy which ran from October 1885 until July of 1886.   In these circumstances he probably went to France early in the autumn of 1886, and we may assume that this early breakthrough painting  with its range of autumnal colours was made soon after he arrived in Paris.

In choosing to travel to France, O'Conor was following a well worn path which had been established by other Irish artists before him, including Nathaniel Hone, Frank O'Meara, Aloysius O'Kelly, Lavery, Burke, and Helen Mable Trevor.  Perhaps his year of study in Antwerp between 1883 and 1884 had made him aware of the new impressionist initiative which had emerged in French painting and we may assume that he was fully aware of the excitement and challenge that Paris had to offer him as a young and ambitious artist.  Indeed, numerous young artists from almost every country in the world made their way to Paris for this very reason.  Paris was then unchallenged as the centre of the art world.   The year 1886 was when the Impressionists showed as a group for the last time, and although O'Conor's arrival in Paris was in all probability after their final  exhibition had closed he could have seen their paintings at Durand-Ruel's gallery, at Georges Petit's, or possibly in the Salon des Indépendants exhibition in September of that year.

O'Conor's visual awareness of Impressionist techniques enabled him to incorporate a range of strong spontaneous brushwork into his painting which was much more adventurous than anything found in his earlier work in Ireland. The trees and saplings are vigorously painted in this work with little evidence of any preliminary drawing.  The foreground has been enriched with bold textures and adventurous palette knife techniques which are also extended into the vertical trunks of the slender trees in the middle distance.  Tones are closely related and the painting is infused with a warmth of colour which is indicative of autumn sunshine. The location for the painting is almost certainly Grez-sur-Loing to the south of Paris, just outside Fontainebleau, where there was a small but lively colony of American, English and Scandinavian artists, most of whom stayed at the Hotel Chevillion.  Both O'Meara and John Lavery had painted there.

 At Grez a close friendship developed between O'Conor and one of the American painters, Francis Chadwick, who was born in Boston in 1850 and who was already living in Grez in 1886 with his wife and two young children.  In later years Chadwick acquired the Hotel Beausejour and O'Conor, on his later visits to paint at Grez, usually stayed at Chadwick's hotel.  The painting may have passed into Chadwick's hands soon after it was painted, or possibly in a later year, and it is both interesting and significant that it remained in Grez for approximately 100 years with Chadwick's descendants before the present owner acquired it in 1983.

Roy Johnston, Ph.D.