RODERIC O'CONOR (1860-1940) Femme Assise Oil on canvas, 62.5 x 48cms (24.25 x 19'') Signed and dated (19)'08 Inscription verso on the stretcher bar, 'Femme Assise Roderic O'Conor No.4' Atelier...

RODERIC O'CONOR (1860-1940) Femme Assise Oil on canvas, 62.5 x 48cms (24.25 x 19'') Signed and dated (19)'08 Inscription verso on the stretcher bar, 'Femme Assise Roderic O'Conor No.4' Atelier stamp verso Provenance: Vente O'Conor, H?tel Drouot, Paris, 7 February 1956; Dr. H. Roland; Sean O'Criadain; private collection Exhibitions: Paris, Salon d'Automne, 1913 (1596); London, Barbican Art Gallery; Belfast, Ulster Museum; Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland; Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery; Roderic O'Conor 1860-1940 , Retrospective Exhibition, 1985-86; (45) ill. Literature: Benington J., Roderic O'Conor 1860-1940, (123), Dublin,1992 Although painted in 1908 Femme Assise was not shown by O'Conor until five years later in 1913, when it was exhibited in Paris at the Salon d'Automne as the fourth painting in a group of six. His exhibits that year included a number of landscapes which were the outcome of a productive period of work which fully engaged him during a summer spent in the small fishing port of Cassis, near Marseille, in the south of France. The showing of paintings from earlier years was not in the least unusual for O'Conor as a survey of his exhibition record reveals. While the Cassis landscapes pay homage to Bonnard's painting both in terms of technique and colour range, the influence in this figurative work is manifestly that of Paul C?zanne. O'Conor would have had ample opportunity to see C?zanne's paintings through his frequent visits to Vollard's gallery in Paris but his motivation in undertaking this painting is more likely to have been prompted by the retrospective exhibition of C?zanne's work which was shown at the Salon d'Automne in1907, a year after his death. O'Conor did not exhibit that year but he did serve on the selection jury. The C?zanne exhibition included two paintings of his wife seated in an armchair, her hands folded in her lap in a pose which is very similar to that depicted here. If anything O'Conor goes further in his composition, giving his subject a slight diagonal lean from left to right across the armchair and introducing a subtle rhythm into the figure which runs downwards from the inclined head, through the upper body to the waistline before meeting the opposing directional emphasis of the folds in her skirt. It is a pose of infinite subtlety against which he has introduced a second set of rhythms in which the neckline of the blouse and the contrasting shape enclosed by the arms enhance the composition. This thinly painted and sensitive work is quite different in feeling from the heavier impasto, expressive brush work and bravura of O'Conor's paintings from a few years earlier. O'Conor's new found restraint in this work is further evidenced through his choice of a subdued color range while the vertical emphasis given to the brushmarks is an additional reference to C?zanne's painting technique. In later years, Clive Bell, who knew O'Conor in Paris as early as 1904, commented on his appreciation of C?zanne in his memoirs when he wrote: 'His (O'Conor's) pictures were full of austere intention unrealized; incidentally they were influenced by C?zanne, at a time when the influence of C?zanne was not widespread, when, in my part of Montparnasse his name was unknown. (Bell, C. Old Friends, London, 1956, pp.164-65). Roy Johnston

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