Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 29th April 2019

80 61 Roderic O’Conor RHA (1860-1940) Seated Nude - (Renee Honta)(c.1923-26) stamped verso: ‘atelier O’CONOR’ oil on canvas 66 x 55.20cm (26 x 21.75in) Provenance: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Vente O’Conor, 7 February 1956; Godolphin Gallery, Dublin 1978; D.T.H. Clarke; Christie’s at RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin, 28 June 1995, lot 34; Private Collection Exhibited: London, Browse & Darby, Roderic O’Conor, 26 October - 26 November 1994, no. 26 (reproduced) Literature: Jonathan Benington, Roderic O’Conor: a biography with a catalogue of his work, Dublin 1992, p.222, no.267 €30,000-€50,000 ($33,707-$56,179) (£25,423-£42,372) As a resident of Brittany Roderic O’Conor had only been able to paint clothed female models, because the local peasant women refused to sit in the nude. This situation changed with his move to Paris in 1904, where he quickly took advantage of the abun- dance of professional models who could be hired to sit as required, both clothed and unclothed. The rounded cheeks and bobbed brown hair of the model who sat for the present work clearly identify her as O’Conor’s mistress, Henriette (Renée) Honta. Born in 1894, she went on to marry him in 1933 and died from cancer of the eye twenty-two years later. On the reverse of the canvas is a fully finished Millhouse Landscape executed by her, for she was not only a competent model but also an artist who went on to become a sociétaire of the Salon d’Automne in Paris. When this work was created in the mid-1920s, they were both living at different addresses in Paris, O’Conor preferring at that stage to protect his privacy and not share his modest living quarters with a woman. Renée regularly posed for O’Conor as a clothed model, but this work is one of a handful he made in which she appears nude. The torsion in her upper body and her averted gaze suggest she is not entirely relaxed, as if she might be about to get up from the couch on which she is seated. The artist has positioned her just beneath one of the large windows that were a feature of 102 rue du Cherche-midi, so that she emerges from the dark background with carefully modelled forms that encompass a full tonal range. At the same time, paying attention to the reflective qualities of flesh, he deploys a range of yellows, oranges, pinks and purples in order to capture the glow of warmth in the shadows. The extensive highlighted parts of Renée’s head, torso and limbs endow the figure with a seeming inner radiance. At the transi- tions between the highlights and the mid-tones O’Conor has relied on deft sweeps of the palette knife to lend a granular texture to the surface, creating a highly painterly effect (a similar treatment is seen in the half-length nude Femme à la chemise that was sold to Roger Fry in 1924 and is now in Derby Museum & Art Gallery). In devising this distinctive technique the Irishman was likely inspired by the heavy build-up of paint found in the late portraits of Rembrandt - a painter he had greatly admired ever since his days as a student at the Antwerp Academy. O’Conor also respected the Dutch artist’s uncompromising truth to nature, showing people as they really were, without glamorising or sentimentalising their features. Jonathan Benington, March 2019