Roderic O'Conor RHA (1860-1940) The Farm, Provence Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 92cm (29 x 36'') Stamped ''atelier O'CONOR' on the reverse Provenance: Hotel Drouot, Paris, Vente O'Conor, 7th February...

Roderic O'Conor RHA (1860-1940) The Farm, Provence Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 92cm (29 x 36'') Stamped ''atelier O'CONOR' on the reverse Provenance: Hotel Drouot, Paris, Vente O'Conor, 7th February 1956 Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London Ogilvy and Mather, London Sale, Sothebys, 18th May, 2000, lot 104 Private Collection, Ireland Exhibited:London, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, French Pictures of the 19th and 20th Century, 1958, No.39 London, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, Roderic O'Conor, 1961, No.1 London, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, Roderic O'Conor, A Selection of his Best Work, 1971, No. 3 London, Barbican Art Gallery, Roderic O'Conor, 1860-1940, 1985, No. 65 Literature: Jonathan Benington, Roderic O'Conor, A Biography with a Catalogue of his Work, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1992, p.211, no.172, colour pl.54, illustratedIn the early years of the 20th century Brittany was supplanted by the Midi as the rural haven in France for avant garde painters, who were attracted by the greater intensity of light and colour offered by the South. Inspired by the example of the Fauves, Roderic O'Conor abandoned Paris in 1913 for Cassis, a small Mediterranean fishing town hedged in on the seaward side by rocky inlets and some of the highest cliffs in Europe. Here, he rented an old villa and spent one of the most productive periods of his career, painting at least two dozen oils and several watercolours in the space of nine months. The results of this creative burst of energy must have satisfied him for he showed four of the Cassis pictures at the 1913 Salon d'Automne in Paris, interrupting his work by a fortnight in order to deliver the pictures personally to the exhibition. O'Conor reveled in his new surroundings and seized the opportunity to paint directly from nature, an approach he had not practiced for nearly a decade since leaving Brittany for Paris in 1904. Like Cezanne and Matisse before him, he made the discovery that the hotter Mediterranean sun infused even the shadows with radiant colour, contributing a range of blues, purples and dark greens to his palette which could be juxtaposed against their contemporaries - the orange, yellow and red of scorched earth, blossom, and sunshine. In the present work O'Conor shows the mountainous landscape of the Montagne de la Canaille, which provides the dramatic backdrop for the town and surrounding countryside, using a combination of strong yet vibrant greens, rich mauves and luminous orange counterpoised with subtle stripes in the pale blue sky which accommodates an early evening moon. In his review of the 1913 Salon d'Automne exhibition, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire praised O'Conor's submissions comparing his work with that of Gauguin. His comments were most probably inspired by the Irishman's reversion to a palette of rich, contrasting colours. O'Conor may not have accepted Gauguin's invitation to the South Seas in 1894, but he did discover his own sun drenched paradise nearly twenty years later in the South of France. We are grateful to Jon Benington, whose research forms the basis for this catalogue entry.

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