IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 29 SEPTEMBER 2025

26 17 Roderic O’Conor (1860-1940) SELF PORTRAIT, c.1919-20 oil on canvas originally stamped [atelier O’Conor] on reverse; with Roland, Browse and Deblanco [London] label on reverse 21.50 by 18.50in. (54.6 by 47cm) Frame Size: 27 by 23in. (68.6 by 58.4cm) Provenance: Atelier O’Conor, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 7 February 1956; Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London; Phillips, London, 13 November 1984; Private collection Exhibited: ‘Roderic O’Conor, Norman Adams’, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London, 1961, catalogue no. 4 Literature: Roy Johnston, ‘Roderic O’Conor - the Elusive Personality’, Irish Arts Review, Winter 1985, p. 32 (repro); Jonathan Benington, Roderic O’Conor a Biography, with a Catalogue of his Work, Dublin 1992, p. 145, fig. 49 and p. 216, no. 219 From 1903 to the mid-1920s, Roderic O’Conor painted himself on at least seven occasions, sometimes full-length standing in his capacious Parisian studio, but mostly in head-and-shoulders format, as here. Three of these paintings are in museum collections (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, Ulster Museum, Belfast and Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA). The present example is distinguished amongst those showing him in his late fifties and sixties for its well-lit face, turned directly towards the daylight rather than at right angles to it. The artist’s grey, almost white shock of hair picks up some bluish tones, but the face is much warmer thanks to the rich pink, apricot and red tones with which it has been painted, or rather trowelled on using a palette knife that endows the features with an almost sculpted prominence. The left-hand shoulder and the collar of the jacket echo the warmer colours above, extending on the right into a flurry of misty brushstrokes that convey the movement of the arm as the artist wields his brush. Finally, to push the profile of the figure further forward, O’Conor has deployed a uniformly dark background, no doubt picking up on the cavern-like interior of his studio located behind him and beyond the reach of daylight from the windows. In this self-portrait the artist is smartly attired, including a cravat round his neck. The art critic Clive Bell, who met and befriended O’Conor in 1904, gives a description of him that seems to tally with the present work executed roughly fifteen years later: ”He was a swarthy man, with a black moustache, greying when I met him, tallish and sturdy. He carried a stick, and there was nothing Bohemian about his appearance. … Pictures, books, music, drawings, photographs (mostly so far as I remember of works by Greco and Cézanne) filled O’Conor’s life and his spacious but gloomy studio.” After relinquishing Brittany for Paris in 1904, O’Conor acquired a reputation for being the most formidable figure in the Latin Quarter. He had a dim view of human nature, did not suffer fools, and upheld very definite opinions which he was not afraid to express openly. Away from his dining circle of writers such as Somerset Maugham and Arnold Bennett, however, he could be a most generous and faithful friend, always ready to extend a helping hand to artists less well off than himself. Jonathan Benington €60,000-€80,000 (£52,170-£69,570 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot17