Roderic O'Conor

Roderic O’Conor was born in Castleplunket, Co. Roscommon. He attended the Metropolitan School of Art and the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin and later studied in Antwerp and Paris. In 1891 he went to Pont-Aven in Brittany where he worked closely with a group of artists in the circle of Paul Gauguin including: Paul Sérusier, Charles Filiger, and Armand Seguin (1869-1903). In 1893 O’Conor worked closely with Seguin and together they made a series of prints in and around Le Pouldu, a small isolated coastal community to the east of Pont-Aven. O’Conor, although a confident and established painter, was a complete novice as a printmaker. Seguin taught O’Conor the technique of etching and their collaboration led to the production of a series of expressive landscape prints which have a unique place within the context of late nineteenth century printmaking in France.