Breton Girl (1906)
Roderic O'Conor (1860–1940)
Arguably the greatest of Impressionist and post-Impressionist painters in the history of Irish art, Roderic O'Conor was born in County Roscommon and entered the Dublin School of Art (now the National College of Art and Design) at the age of 19. The following year, along with fellow artist Richard Moynan, he studied drawing and fine art painting at the Royal Hibernian Academy, before going to the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts in Antwerp. After Antwerp, O'Conor went to Paris where he became inspired by the Impressionist landscape artists like Pissarro and Sisley. He developed an interest in landscapes and duly left Paris for the Breton village of Pont-Aven (a latter day Barbizon school), where he painted with several artists including the revered Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin. In some of his 1890s paintings one can see clear traces of the painting techniques which later became known as Fauvism and Expressionism. In Pont-Aven, O'Conor painted two portraits of Breton girls. In this portrait, Breton Girl (1906), she stares at the viewer with a blunt, almost expressionless gaze. Here her head is slightly tilted to one side and raised, but she looks at us with haughty suspicion. In both pictures he paints stripes of complementary reds and greens down her cheek and neck.
