21.50 by 25.75in. (54.6 by 65.4cm)

Title: LE LOING AT SUNDOWN, c.1902
Note: Montigny is a small town on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau. A few kilometres upstream from Grez, it is also on the Loing, and in the late nineteenth century could easily be reached by train from the capital. Artists soon began to flock there, drawn by the attractions of forest, river, sunshine and youthful camaraderie. O'Conor discovered the place in the late 1880s when he was a student in the atelier of Charles Carolus-Duran in Paris. He spent several summers at nearby Grez-sur-Loing, to which his fellow Irishmen John Lavery and Frank O'Meara had not long before beaten a path. O'Conor's fondness for the area was such that he returned several times in the mid-1890s, staying with his good friends, the American painter Francis Chadwick and the English etcher Arthur Heseltine. In August and September of 1902 O'Conor revisited Montigny accompanied by another American friend, Guy Ferris Maynard. On this occasion, however, the renewal of old acquaintances was not his sole motivation, for he had brought his easel and paints with him, desirous perhaps of a change in terrain from his usual base in Pont-Aven, Brittany. Brief though it was, the trip inspired a return to the painting of pure landscapes, comprising a group of tranquil views of the River Loing shaded by tall trees that were just beginning to display their autumn colours. Many of these works, of which Le Loing at sundown is a fully resolved example, were inspired by the mystery of the half-light, with the sun sitting low on the horizon and making jagged silhouettes of the trees. These pictures were also characterised by a highly painterly handling of the oil medium, from translucent stains to textured scumblings and thicker calligraphic strokes. Such an approach revealed O'Conor to be, as Henry Roland described him, "a fauve before the Fauves", enshrined here in what amounted to a freshwater accompaniment to the series of Breton marines he had created just a few years earlier. For O'Conor, a change in terrain did not lead to any relaxation of his modernist allegiances. This is especially apparent in the network of broad, thick brushstrokes with which he has painted the line of trees and the sky In Le Loing at Sundown, conveying the impact of a breeze. Indeed the tall tree occupying centre-stage in this Montigny riverscape has the whipped profile of the trees in some of O'Conor's Breton etchings from 1893. To render the fading light he has utilised a range of bright tints, extending to purple, pink and two yellows, heightening the local colours he observed in nature. Whilst this radical technique would have shocked many in 1902, its derivation can be traced back to the artist's precocious allegiances with Vincent van Gogh (via his brother Theo) and Paul Gauguin (via personal friendship) in the early 1890s. It is perhaps no accident that one of the seminal lessons in modernist painting was delivered on a riverbank. In 1888 Gauguin was standing next to the river in Pont-Aven when he instructed the young Paul Sérusier: "What do those trees look like? You see them as yellow: very well, put on some yellow; and as for that shadow, which looks blue if anything, paint it pure ultramarine! Those red leaves? Take some vermilion!" The tale would certainly have reached O'Conor's ears, for it became seminal to the emergence of the Nabi group of painters once Sérusier returned to Paris with the picture and showed it to his closest friends. Today, titled The Talisman, it is one of the treasures of Paris's Musée d'Orsay. Jonathan Benington, April 2023
Frame dimensions: 30.5 by 35in. (77.5 by 88.9cm)

Excellent condition.

oil on canvas

with artist's studio stamp on reverse