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Roderic O'Conor , Irish, 1860-1940

Title

The Farm at Lezaven, Finistère

Date1894

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions

72 x 93 cm

Signedlower left: O'Conor, 1894

Credit LinePurchased, 1961

Object numberNGI.1642

DescriptionHaving arrived in 1884, Roderic O’Conor spent more than a decade in Pont-Aven, the tiny picturesque Breton village that had been attracting and hosting artists from all over Europe and beyond for many years. He found himself among a vanguard of young painters who were developing, under the influence of fellow visitor Paul Gauguin, an advanced Post-Impressionist style. Eager to experiment, O’Conor allowed his technique to evolve rapidly, though the subjects he favoured - portraits of the Breton people in traditional attire, landscapes and seascapes - were relatively orthodox.
Visible through the trees in the background of this landscape is a seventeenth-century farmhouse used as a studio by many artists, including Gauguin, who had rented the building in 1889, and O’Conor, who worked there in 1893-1894. O’Conor employs a sequence of parallel ‘screens’ of flowers and shrubbery to lead the eye into the picture, while allowing a vibrant palette of green, pink and red, and typically fluid brushwork to bring the lush summer landscape to life. Unlike his many Antwerp - and Paris- trained compatriots, who embraced Naturalism and on their return to Ireland applied it to Irish subjects, O’Conor was a true colourist with avant-garde sensibilities, who remained in France for the rest of his life.

March 2016

ProvenanceHotel Drouot, Paris, 7 February 1956, Vente O'Conor; purchased, Roland, Browse and Delbanco, London, 1961 Exhibition HistoryGauguin and the Pont-Aven Group, Tate Gallery, London; Kunsthaus, Zürich, 1966

Roland, Browse and Delbanco, London, 1971

Aspects of Irish Art, a Loan Exhibition; Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 27 January - 3 March 1974; Toledo Museum of Arts, Toledo, Ohio, 17 March - 14 April 1974; St Louis Art Museum, St Louis, Missouri, 3 May - 9 June 1974

Post-Impressionism, Royal Academy of Arts, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979-1980

The Irish Impressionists: Irish Artists in France and Belgium 1850-1914, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; Ulster Museum, Belfast, 1984-1985

Roderic O'Conor, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 12 September - 3 November 1985; Ulster Museum, Belfast, 15 November 1985 - 18 January 1986; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 30 January - 8 March 1986; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, 14 March - 10 May 1986

Onlookers in France: Irish Realist and Impressionist Painters, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, 1 October - 22 November 1993

Von Poussin bis Monet. Die Farben Frankreichs, The Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen, 22 March - 6 September 2015; Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, 10 October 2015 - 17 January 2016


Label TextHaving first visited Pont-Aven in the 1880s, O'Conor returned to the tiny Breton village in 1891 and remained for more than a decade. There, he was one of a vanguard of painters who were developing, under the influence of Gauguin, an advanced Post-Impressionist style. Eager to experiment, O'Conor allowed his technique to evolve rapidly, though the subjects he favoured were relatively orthodox. Visible through the trees in the background of this landscape is a seventeenth-century farmhouse used as a studio by many artists, including Gauguin, who had rented it in 1889, and O'Conor, who worked there in 1893–1894.