Roderic O'Conor (1860 - 1940) Seated Nude against orange Oil on canvas, 91.5 x 74cm (36 x 29'') Stamped Atelier O'CONOR on the reverse Roderic O'Conor was one of the most experimental artists...
Roderic O'Conor (1860 - 1940) Seated Nude against orange Oil on canvas, 91.5 x 74cm (36 x 29'') Stamped Atelier O'CONOR on the reverse Roderic O'Conor was one of the most experimental artists of his generation. He was in the fortunate position of having private means, which meant that he never had to compromise his art in the service of market forces. He could also afford to be relaxed about exhibiting his work publicly. The only critic he had to please was himself, and while his development can be broken down into a series of stylistic phases, each of which was radical in its own right, periodically he sought to raise his art by pushing his analysis of colour and form that bit further. Seated Nude against Orange, is such a work, loosely related to what he was doing around 1910, but in many ways as daring a statement as Houses at Lezavan had been twelve years earlier. As far as its subject matter is concerned, Seated Nude against Orange can be compared most closely with a nude O'Conor painted in 1911, Bleu et Rose. In that work, the figure adopted a similar pose with her arms resting on a divan piled high with colourful drapes. But here the similarities end, for the stylistic idiom of Bleu et Rose was still one of understated washes of colour that related harmoniously to one and other. Seated Nude against Orange, on the other hand, has a much more powerful presence due to its expressive handling of paint, its wilful distortions of form, and its emotionally charged colours: strident yellow, orange, red, purple, green and blue. It is a determinedly contemporary statement, right down to the drape suspended behind the figure with its abstract pattern of geometric shapes filled with colour. The positioning of the head of the nude directly in front of the green lozenge reinforces this feeling of modernity, implying that the artist's manipulation of observed reality in the service of design overrides the need to represent that reality. O'Conor is stating, in effect, that literal representation is outmoded. It is difficult to pinpoint a source of inspiration for the present work. The extreme simplification of the face, especially the diagonal hatched marks on the shaded side, recalls the primitive characteristics of early Cubist nudes such as Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon. The rhythmic design, decorative backdrop and fauve colours are reminiscent of Matisse, while the expressionist brushwork may be compared with that of Rouault (with whom O'Conor served on the jury of the 1907 Salon D'Automne). Ultimately, Seated Nude against Orange has to be seen not as a response to any specific artist or style, but in more general terms as a contribution to the ferment of experimentation that engulfed the Parisian art world in the years leading up to the First World War. Most of the artists engaged in that movement might have been twenty or so years younger than O'Conor was, but he could still hold his own as an innovator. Jonathan Benington 2001 Provenance: Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London Gorry Gallery, Dublin Dr. Michael Wynne, Dublin Exhibited: London, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, Roderic O'Conor, 1961, no. 14; London, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, Roderic O'Conor and Norman Adams, 1964, no. 2; Sydney, David Jones' Art Gallery, Matthew Smith and Roderic O'Conor, 1965, no. 14; London, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, Roderic O'Conor, A selection of his best Work, 1971, no. 30; Cork, Crawford Municipal School of Art, Irish Art in the 19th Century, 1971, no. 105. Literature: Jonathan Benington, Roderic O'Conor, A Biography with a Catalogue of his Work, 1992, pp.116 and 206, no. 135, illustrated.
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