James Arthur O'Connor

by John Hutchinson

When it was first announced about eighteen months ago that the National Gallery of Ireland was planning a major exhibition of the work of James Arthur O'Connor, a Dublin collector said to me that he wished good luck to anyone who would attempt to select such an Exhibition. This meant that there existed so many paintings attributed to O'Connor that the task of knowing which of them he had actually painted would be well-nigh impossible. Implied bv the comment was the observation that such an exhibition would he a dull room of almost identical green-brown pictures showing little men in red waistcoats walking along country roads. For such is the reputation of O'Connor who for long has been the best-known and most-loved of all Irish painters. Such an assessment of him, as is startlingly demonstrated by the choice of pictures in the Exhibition, is very far from the truth; and O'Connor is revealed as a major Romantic landscape painter whose works demonstrate a considerable variety of styles, superior technical skill and a poetic sensibility in the treatment of nature. Nor is the story of O'Connor's life exactly without interest: struggling early years; an abortive trip to England, returning home, penniless, to orphaned sisters; then important commissions in Ireland; travels on the Continent and moderate success in London; and, at the end. failing eyesight and financial hardship. It could be the plot of an opera by Balfe or William Wallace.

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

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