Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 21st October 2019

56 Between 1905 and 1927 Roderic O’Conor executed scores of canvases featuring young women posed in his cavernous studio on Paris’s Left Bank. Seated Woman in a Red Dress, which has not been on the market for 30 years, is arguably the most ambitious and psychologically penetrating of his paintings depicting clothed female models. The care that O’Conor lavished on this study of a young woman with a bobbed hairstyle, dressed for a night out, suggests that it was intended for one of the Parisian exhibitions he contributed to regularly. Although the absence of an inscribed title on the reverse of the canvas does not allow a definitive identification, it may well be the work entitled Le divan that he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1927 (no. 1643). The style of the painting and the model’s fashionable dress date it to around 1925. By adding his signature - a mark of approval he assigned only frugally - the artist demonstrated that he regarded the work as a fully finished statement, satisfying his rigorous standards of excellence. The nearly full-length figure dominates the composition, her intense gaze meeting and holding the viewer’s attention, whilst the use of side lighting to model her head, limbs and torso endows her with a palpable, almost sculptural presence. At the same time O’Conor does not neglect to include details of hairstyle and fashion that push the picture firmly into the realms of portraiture, thereby avoiding any possibility of her being viewed as a generic type. The artist has gone to great lengths to situate his young model within a lavishly appointed setting, deploying props that have been chosen and arranged with all the care of a stage designer. The diagonally placed divan leads the eye into the composition, with the young woman seated crosswise on it as if she has just moved from a reclining position and is preparing to rise. Her hands grip the leading edge of the upholstery, reinforcing the impression of latent movement. In the background the artist has suspended a deep crimson drape, its colour complementing the brighter red of the model’s dress. The top of the bookcase or cabinet hidden underneath the cloth supports an arrangement of three vases - a blue- and-white Chinese vessel at the far left (its straighter sides neatly ‘bookending’ the picture’s top left corner), followed by two globular vases in green and white (their rounder forms echoing those of the model’s head and shoulders). The horizontal line created by the top edge of the cloth corresponds with eye level - both that of the artist and, by way of deliberate placement, that of his model. Although by his own admission O’Conor was not an artist who created works that told stories, Seated Woman in a Red Dress is unusual within the context of his wider oeuvre in that it includes various specifics of make-up and dress that invite speculation. Whilst the young woman’s necklace, dark eye shadow and neat bob with its ‘kiss’ curl are suggestive of the sort of preparation calculated to draw the male gaze, the fact that one of the straps of her low-cut dress has been coquettishly loosened conveys the hint of an invitation. Perhaps, rather than being about to rise to her feet, these details should be interpreted as signs that the model has made room on the divan for a male friend to join her. This impression is reinforced by the turning of her head in the viewer’s direction, holding our gaze with a smouldering look. A further indication of the trouble O’Conor went to when planning the composition of Seated Woman in a Red Dress is found in a drawing showing a nude model holding an identical pose. In this work the woman’s large eyes, full lips and broad shoulders suggest that it served as a preparatory study for the painting. Likewise some of the background artefacts had already been subjected to O’Conor’s intense scrutiny: the Chinese vase at the top left made an appearance in a number of his late floral still lifes. This refined object survived the dispersal of his estate in 1956, but was accidentally damaged by a film crew in the mid-1980s (for the drawing and the vase see Thierry Lannon & Associés, Brest, 13 October 2009, lots 393 and 407J). Jonathan Benington, September 2019