Roderic O'Conor

Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Vente O’Conor, 7 February 1956

Musée de Pont-Aven, Roderic O’Conor, L’oeuvre gravé, 20 March - 20 June 1999;
Musée de Pont-Aven, Peintres Irlandais en Bretagne, 26 June - 27 September 1999, no.32

Jonathan Benington, Roderic O’Conor, a Biography with a Catalogue of his Work, 1992, p.203, no.108 (as Girl wearing Pont-Aven head-dress)

Original canvas. There are some faint signs of craquelure to the thicker areas of impasto on her hat and the on the book, and a very faint pattern to the blue of her dress, only visible upon close inspection; otherwise the work appears in good overall condition. UV light reveals two small area of retouching in the blue of her dress. Held in a gilt plaster frame.
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The evolution of the subject of the female Breton peasant in O’Conor’s art spans at least a dozen years and includes drawings and etchings as well as paintings. The placing of the present work in that series was previously thought to have occurred towards the end of the artist’s Breton sojourn. Whilst the interior setting, the model’s contemplative pose and her close proximity to the picture plane are features consistent with the cluster of Breton portraits O’Conor painted during 1902-04, the fact that she is depicted in full profile with eyes averted, head bowed, sets the present work apart. The canvas also lacks the earthen tones and the close attention to detail of the 1902-03 portraits, favouring instead a presentation characterised by an uncluttered composition and broadly massed areas painted in red, blue and yellow (the ochrous skin tones may allude to Gauguin’s Tahitian portraits, three of which belonged to O’Conor). This emphasis on large expanses of primary colours,  relieved by patches of white, is also a feature of O’Conor’s Breton seascapes of the late 1890s, suggesting that Breton girl reading should be assigned to this slightly earlier date, around 1899-1900, rather than to the very end of his association with Brittany. Date aside, the portrait can be firmly linked to Pont-Aven because the young woman is wearing the ‘coiffe de travail’ particular to that town.

O’Conor’s decision to move his Breton models from plein air settings into the studio meant that he had to allude either to domestic activities, to pastimes or to a personal connection with the painter. His preference for attributing literary interests to his Breton models speaks not only of his own love of books, but also of the cultural exchange that took place in Pont-Aven between well educated visiting painters, arriving in ever greater numbers, and a peasantry that had been largely closed to the outside world until the 1870s. There is certainly nothing in this study of quiet, focused concentration to infer any sense of intellectual or cultural superiority.

We are grateful to Jonanthan Benington for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.