James Arthur O'Connor (1792-1841)

The respected Irish landscape artist and illustrator James O'Connor was born in Dublin in 1792. He was a self-taught painter, except for a few drawing lessons from William Sadler. He was a Romantic and closely associated with the artists Francis Danby and George Petrie. He must have possessed a natural flair for painting as by the age of 32 was exhibiting his pictures at the Royal Academy (RA) in London. Eight years later, in 1830, he began exhibiting regularly with the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in Dublin.

Scene in Co Wicklow. 1820

James O'Connor took several trips to France, Holland, and the Rhineland, where he became friends with the German Romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich. He died prematurely in Brompton, South London in 1841, aged 49.

In 1985, the National Gallery of Ireland held a retrospective for O'Connor's landscapes, which was repeated in 1986 at the Ulster Museum, Belfast. James O'Connor's artworks are held in several collections in Ireland and the United Kingdom, including the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

More Information About Visual Arts in Ireland

• For details of other landscape painters, see: Irish Artists: Paintings and Biographies.
• For more about 19th century landscape art, see: Irish Art Guide.

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