Roderic O'Conor

Who was Roderic O'Conor?

Roderic O'Conor was an Irish painter.

Born in Milltown, Castleplunket, Co. Roscommon, Ireland, O'Conor studied at Ampleforth College, then at Dublin and Antwerp before moving to Paris where he was deeply influenced by the Impressionists.

O'Conor attended the Metropolitan School and Royal Hibernian Academy early in his career. Like his classmate, Richard Moynan, O'Conor would travel to Antwerp then Paris to gain further experience. In 1892 he went to Pont-Aven in Brittany where he worked closely with a group of artists around the Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin, whom he befriended. His method of painting with textured strokes of contrasting colours also owed much to Van Gogh. His nephew, Patrick O'Connor, was also a painter as well as a sculptor.

O'Conor died in Nueil-sur-Layon, France in March 1940.

In March 2011 a work by O'Conor sold for £337,250. Landscape, Cassis, an oil-on-canvas, was painted by O'Conor in the south of France in 1913 and sold at Sotheby's for significantly higher than the estimate price.