Estimated Price:

   $   

Realized Price:

   $   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Log in or subscribe to view price data

signed with initials and dated l.r.: ROC '03; titled on a fragmented label attached to the stretcher bar and stamped atelier O'CONOR on the reverse

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Hotel Drouot, Paris, Vente O'Conor, 7 February 1956
EXHIBITED

Possibly Paris, Salon des Indépendants, 1904, no.1781
CATALOGUE NOTE

This still life of a tall jug, a wine carafe, a bowl and a shallow dish which contains four pears has been freely painted with bold and expressive brush strokes, introducing a sense of energy to an otherwise quite ordinary subject. O'Conor has placed these objects below his eye level, in a dark interior on a table or similar flat surface which has been covered with a light coloured cloth. The jug and the bowl to the right at the edge of the composition are typical of 19th century ceramic ware from the town of Quimper in Brittany. Objects such as these began to appear in the still life pictures which he introduced into his Brittany repertoire before the end of the nineteenth century. As he was at that time a year round resident in Pont-Aven it is reasonable to assume that they were painted in the darker autumn and winter months when the weather turned cold and wet, and it became more difficult to paint out of doors.

When he moved back to Paris in 1904, removing himself from the remote Brittany landscape in favour of an urban environment, studio still-life paintings began to occur more frequently in his work. These paintings share a common interest in the use of a light to dark contrast which lends a sense of drama to their composition. In this particular painting it is the contrast between the light objects and the dark background, in association with the agressiveness of the brushwork, which gives the painting its pictorial interest. O'Conor's use of longer brush strokes to describe the surface of the pears is also reminiscent of the more controlled striping of his Brittany paintings from the 1890's.

In the 1904 Salon des Indépendants exhibition in Paris in February, O'Conor was represented by six paintings which he sent in from his address at Hôtel des Voyageurs, in Pont-Aven, where he had an attic studio. Two of these were portraits, one was a Montigny-sur-Loing landscape depicting the mill which was a well known landmark there, and three were of still-life subjects. The landscape with the Montigny reference was probably painted in the course of a visit which he made in 1902, when he also produced a number of lively and fluidly brushed paintings of the river and trees on the river banks. This still-life uses a similar wet on wet painting technique, and equally fluid brushstrokes to those of the Montigny river paintings from 1902 and 1903.

One of O'Conor's three still-life paintings in the 1904 Salon des Indépendants was listed under the title 'Les Quatre Poires' (no.1781). Although there is no inscription on the back of this still-life clearly identifying it as the salon exhibit, its technical similarities to the 1902/03 Montigny paintings strongly suggests that this is the same work.

Dr. Roy Johnston