Estimated Price:

   £   

Realised 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

Roderic O'Conor
1860-1940
houses at lezaven, pont-aven
stamped atelier O'CONOR on the reverse, signed and dated 1898 and further inscribed Pont Aven-a-Lezaven 1898 on the original stretcher
oil on canvas
To be sold with original stretcher.
(2)
92.4 by 73 cm; 36 1/2 by 28 3/4 in
This is the largest Breton landscape by O'Conor still remaining in private hands. It is also one of the most experimental and modern works the artist ever painted. To appreciate this, we need look no further than the date inscribed on the back of the picture. This reveals that the canvas was executed in 1898, making it a nineteenth century work. Yet the annals of art history tell us that it would be another seven years before the Fauves and the Expressionists began to handle colour with an equivalent degree of abstraction. The date of Houses at Lezaven is beyond dispute, which poses a question as to how he could have arrived at such a turning point so early. What external factors underpinned the creative process?
O'Conor's return to Pont-Aven in the summer of 1898 brought to an end his three-year long self-imposed isolation at Rochefort-en-terre in the heart of rural Brittany. This episode was triggered by Gauguin's final departure from Tahiti in 1895, for although the Irishman declined Gauguin's invitation to join him in his search for a primitive paradise, by removing himself to a Breton backwater he was at least taking a step in the right direction. O'Conor had fallen under the older man's influence in 1894 when they were together at Pont-Aven, and he was encouraged to abandon his previous method of painting in stripes (a la Van Gogh) for an approach that was characterised by broken brushwork and a preference for hot, exotic colours. Relocated from 1896 at Rochefort and separated from Gauguin, he resolved to demonstrate his continuing loyalty by searching for a more personal response to the artistic legacy of his friend. In a series of mysterious symbolist compositions incorporating animals and figures, the Irishman undertook a leap of faith by deciding to replace observed reality with images derived from memory and the imagination.
Although we cannot be certain the symbolist series did not continue with the return to Pont-Aven in 1898, the surviving dated pictures from that year suggest O'Conor's focus had reverted once again to external reality. Seascapes and landscapes predominated in the new work, and the urge to innovate and experiment remained as strong as ever. The searing, overheated colours of the Rochefort works were transferred directly to his paintings of the rocky Breton coastline and the winding lanes of Pont-Aven.
In Houses at Lezavan the non-naturalistic colours are arranged in three broadly horizontal bands: purplish-pink at the bottom, orange in the middle, green at the top. It is surely no coincidence that the same chromatic arrangement occurs in symbolist pieces by O'Conor such as Figures in a Pool (private collection) and Personnages avec Cheval(recently sold Dublin, 2001). The difference is solely one of degree, for in the Lezavan picture he has avoided the thick, textured paint surfaces of these earlier works and opted for a fluid handling of the medium. Using less paint allows the colours to have greater punch. This in turn reinforces their symbolic function, for they have been chosen, quite deliberately, in order to communicate an emotional response. What O'Conor is looking at is a scene illuminated by intense sunshine which strikes the buildings but cannot reach the path because of the high bank above it. Rather than vainly attempting to reproduce this effect, he follows the much quoted advice handed down by Gauguin to Paul Serusier in 1888, and uses pure colours as equivalents of bright sunlight:
'How do you see that tree? It's green? Then choose the most beautiful green on your palette. - And this shadow? It's more like blue? Do not be afraid to paint it with the purest blue possible.'
O'Conor would undoubtedly have heard this story at second hand, and he could not have chosen a better place at which to reactivate the lesson. Lezaven (a district of Pont-Aven situated on the wooded slopes to the west of the town) was where, in 1894, he rented a studio that had previously been occupied by Gauguin. According to Matthew Smith, who was a friend of O'Conor in later life, the Irishman lent the studio to Gauguin for a while. When he resumed occupancy, he found some of the master's discarded canvases and was flattered to discover that Gauguin had made use of one of his own drawings for part of a composition. A return in 1898 to the Lezaven district could only have served to reactivate such memories for O'Conor, reminding him poignantly of the need to keep the French painter's legacy alive.
Jonathan Benington 2001
Provenance:
The artist's studio
Sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 7th February 1956
Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London
Schoneman Galleries, New York, 1960
Bruce Vardon, New Jersey, USA
Exhibited:
London, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, French Pictures of the 19th & 20th Century, 1958, No.17 (as Red Road at Pont-Aven);
London, Barbican Art Gallery, and toured to Belfast, Ulster Museum, Dublin, National Gallery, and Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, Roderic O'Conor 1860-1940, 1985, no.20;
Dublin, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Roderic O'Conor Room, loan exhibit, 1995 to 2000.
Literature:
Denys Sutton, 'Roderic O'Conor, Little-Known Member of the Pont-Aven Circle', Studio, November 1960, pp.168 and 174, illustrated in colour;
John O'Brian, 'Morice: O'Conor, Gauguin, Bonnard et Vuillard', Revue de l'Universite de Moncton, vol.15, nos.2-3, 1982, pp.15-16;
Julian Campbell, The Irish Impressionists: Irish Artists in France and Belgium 1850-1914, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1984, p.99;
Jonathan Benington, 'From Realism to Expressionism: The Early Career of Roderic O'Conor', Apollo, April 1985, pp.257 and 260, illustrated;
Jonathan Benington, Roderic O'Conor, A Biography with a Catalogue of his Work, 1992, pp.81 and 196, no.53, illustrated;
Roy Johnston, Roderic O'Conor, Vision and Expression, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1996, pp.34-35, illustrated in colour;
Vincent DeVean, Roderic O'Conor, an Irish Master, Cara, September/October 1996, p.12, illustrated.
Film:
Featured in Le Voyage (The Life of Roderic O'Conor), Documentary, 1993, 52 minutes, narrated by Andrew Sachs.