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Dimensions: 45 by 53.5cm., 17 3/4 by 21 1/2 in.
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Provenance: PROPERTY OF A LADY
The Artist's Studio
Sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Vente O'Conor, 7th February 1956
Browse and Darby, London
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Exhibited: London, Browse and Darby, Roderic O'Conor, 1860-1940, 1994, no.19.
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Notes: Painted c.1908-11, this little known still life is a stunning example of O'Conor's masterly use of oil paint to evoke radiant light and colour. The vibrant red, yellow, pink, mauve and blue of Nature Morte demonstrate above all the perceptiveness of Matthew Smith's description of O'Conor as "fauve before the Fauves", or as another friend, Armand Seguin put it: "what you see first of all is the colours around you, whereas what charms, grabs and captivates me is, above all else, beautiful lines."
The execution of Nature Morte is quick and confident, combining bravura with touches of great delicacy, as in the flicked brushstrokes used to render the decoration on the bowl containing the fruit. O'Conor has diluted his colours and stained many of them on with a rag - a method he favoured because the white priming of the canvas shone through the translucent paint layer, lending added luminosity to it.
The artist's elevated viewpoint brings the objects very close to the picture plane, the brightest colours being reserved for the fruit in the foreground. The firm delineation of the apples and the blue ceramic object behind and to the left anchor the composition, ensuring that they act as focal points that give structure to this chromatic symphony.
An empirical description of the scene as a windowsill covered with a range of household objects is accurate but inappropriate in this case, for O'Conor's primary impulse in painting the picture was to capture the penetration of bright sunlight entering his studio from a large window immediately behind and above the objects. In other words he is looking into the light, hence the objects and the window embrasure are depicted under conditions where normal gradated modelling of forms from light to dark does not apply. It is a difficult and challenging task for an artist to carry this off, not least because it is essential to work quickly before the light changes: Nature Morte would almost certainly have been executed in a single sitting. More than twenty-five years experience as a painter enabled O'Conor to choose his colours and place his marks on canvas with unerring judgement, brilliantly conveying the excitement and pleasure of the moment.
Jonathan Benington, 2004
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