Roderic O' Conor (1860-1940) Portrait of a Woman Ol on paper, 36.2 x 25.7cm (14.25 x 10'') Provenance: The Jefferson Smurfit Group, Dublin Literature: Jonathan Benington, 'Roderic O'Conor, a...

Roderic O' Conor (1860-1940) Portrait of a Woman Ol on paper, 36.2 x 25.7cm (14.25 x 10'') Provenance: The Jefferson Smurfit Group, Dublin Literature: Jonathan Benington, 'Roderic O'Conor, a biography with a catalogue of his work', Dublin 1992, p.213, no. 197 This very relaxed and informal portrait of a seated woman is painted with a sponaneity which might seem to suggest a dating to O'Conor's intimiste period of 1907-1911. However, the fact that the subject fills most of the composition and is delineated in sufficient detail to warrant the term 'portrait', must indicate a rather later dating of around 1915. The War years constituted a period of tansition for O'Conor from intimiste interiors to the solidly constructed and impasted nudes and still lifes of the 1920s. During this time, a young model by the name of Renee Honta came to work for him, with whom he was to fall in love (they eventually married in 1933). The portrait of her entitled la blouse vert which dates from 1919 shows a young woman with dark eye lashes and dark, shoulder length curly hair, brushed back from her forehead. She bears an unmistakeable resemblence to the model portrayed in his earlier work. Portrait of a Woman has never been shown in public and has not been reproduced. Together with a study of a nude, it was given by the artist to the English painter Matthew Smith, probably shortly after they met in 1919. Smith was influenced by O'Conor's love of bright colours and his direct method of painting, to the extent that he referred to his friend in later life as mon maitre. He would frequently take the two pictures out of a drawer in his studio to show visitors. After Smith's death inb 1959, the two pictures were inherited by his former mistress, Mary Keene, along with the other contents of his studio (most of the hundreds of pictures and works on paper were bequethed to the Guildhall Art Gallery, London). Jonathan Benington

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