Roderic O'Conor: The Elusive Personality

Irish Arts Review

Roderic O'Conor: The Elusive PersonalityAuthor(s): Roy JohnstonSource: Irish Arts Review (1984-1987), Vol. 2, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), pp. 31-40Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20491826 .

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

RODERIC O'CONOR THE ELUSIVE PERSONALITY

La Ferme, c.1892. Oil on canvas. Collection Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand.

The general facts about the Irish artist Roderic O'Conor, (1860

1940), have been known to an audience which embraces art historians, collect ors, dealers, and connoisseurs, ever since the publication in 1960 of Denys Sutton's article which gave the first account of O'Conor's life and work.1 Some of the inaccuracies in Sutton's article have been corrected elsewhere, in the light of more evidence which has recently become available,2 but although

much more is now known about the work which O'Conor did during his lifetime there are still areas where infor

mation is limited. His complex and multi-faceted personality, for example, has cast him as a mysterious and for midable figure although he was also known to be kind, generous, and sup portive of his less well off friends. Some

of these characteristics will be consider ed later, in an attempt to determine the truth about his personality on the basis of evidence from those with whom he came in contact.

Roderic O'Conor was born in County Roscommon in 1860 into a branch of one of Ireland's most important and historic families, the O'Conor's of Connaught, and his early years were spent in the Roscommon countryside at the family home in the townland of

Milton, between Tulsk and Castle plunkett. His father and grandfather before him had been members of the legal profession, and he was sent to

England to be educated at Ampleforth College in Yorkshire. Rather than enter a university or take up a career in one of the professions, which might reason ably have been expected of someone from a heritage which could be traced back to the last Kings of Ireland, O'Conor instead chose to study art at the Metropolitan School in Dublin,

where he enrolled in 1879. From there,

Roy Johnston selected the paintings and prepared the catalogue for the current

retrospective exhibition of the work of Roderic O'Conor which opened at the Barbican, London this autumn and will be seen at the Ulster Museum, Belfast, the National Gallery of Ireland,

Dublin,and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. Here he writes of the Artist's life and

character.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

RODERIC O'CONOR- THE ELUSIVE PERSONALITY

following a route which had already been well established by other Dublin art students before him, including

Walter Osborne, J.M. Kavanagh, and Nathaniel Hill, he went to the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts in Antwerp in 1883, eventually making his way to Paris and rural France where he painted for the remainder of his lifetime.

O'Conor's most important artistic affiliation was with Paul Gauguin and the School of Pont-Aven in Brittany in the 1890's, and his paintings from that period stand among the most radical works of their time. His thirteen year association with the West of France ended in 1904, by which time he had settled in Paris where he painted many nudes, portraits, and still lifes in his

Montparnasse studio, occasionally leav ing the city to paint the landscape at

Grez-sur-Loing close to Fontainebleau, or to travel further afield to the South of France, or to Italy, or Spain. O'Conor married his former model and mistress, Renee Honta, when he was seventy three years of age and she was thirty nine, and together they spent the remaining years of his life in the West of France, living quietly in the small town of Neuil-sur-Layon in Maine-et

Loire, where he died in 1940. O'Conor's earliest known paintings

are two small seascapes which he painted at Aberystwyth in Wales, probably in 1885.3 In stylistic terms they are within the traditions of nineteenth century

Naturalism, and although they were painted at a time when the Impression ists were at their peak, they show no evidence of the broken brushwork, or the variegated colour and the flickering effects of light associated with what was then a new and radical development in French painting. However, soon after O'Conor arrived in Paris he quickly came under the influence of the Impressionists, and early paintings such as his 'Groupe de Peupliers, Effet de Soleil' of 1886, and the slightly later 'Landscape with Road and Farm Build ings',4 show the extent to which he had quickly adopted their techniques.

O'Conor's quick transfer as a young artist, from the conservatism of nine teenth century Irish painting in Dublin, to a Parisian environment populated by a generation of artists intent on evolving an entirely new approach to painting, in all probability contributed to his eclectic

ism. He was influenced by Pissarro, Monet, and Sisley, but by 1891-'92, by which time he had taken up more or less permanent residence in Brittany, a

much more expressive and altogether more vigorous approach to painting, much influenced by the work of Van Gogh, was present in his rich and colourful Pont-Aven landscapes.

'La Ferme', an early work from his Pont-Aven period does not have quite the same degree of expressive energy and rhythmic vigour of his rather better known 'Yellow Landscape, Pont-Aven' of 1892,5 which is in the collection of the Tate Gallery in London, but it has a sensitively developed colour range with a rather restrained use of the linear striping which was typical of his work at that time. His 'Self-Portrait' in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland, although inscribed with the date of '03, is almost certainly an earlier work; his rather aloof expression and slightly sardonic look is in keeping with aspects of his character which were commented on in later years, by those who knew him well. His appearance tallies with the description of him given by one of the Pont-Aven artists who worked with him in 1892 and '93 - Cuno Amiet; the young Swiss artist wrote in a letter to his father...

"He (O'Conor) is quite a sturdy chap with a relatively square face and a nose which resembles that of an eagle and he has grey rather sharp sighted eyes. His appearance is

rather calm, and there is nothing noisy or hectic about him."6

O'Conor's interaction with the group of Pont-Aven artists who had been inspired by Gauguin, produced some memorable work. 'The Glade',7 in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New

York, is a fine example of his painting style and a work which reveals many of the principles which united the group's efforts, while managing to retain much that is uniquely O'Conor in the use of strong colours, rich contrasts, and a preference for paint used thickly and applied with gusto. There was some tapering off in his work for reasons

which will be discussed later in the text, after Gauguin's final departure for the South Seas in 1895, so that towards the end of the century his work tended to become rather more restrained, and naturalism returned to many of the portraits which he then painted of young Breton girls in their traditional costumes.

O'Conor's links with Brittany were phased out in 1904 when he transferred to Paris, perhaps in search of a new challenge, or perhaps because most of his former colleagues had by then moved elsewhere. Neither can it be coincidental that the date of his leaving was shortly after the death of his closest friend, Armand Seguin, late in 1903.

There may have been some carry over from his painting methods in Brittany into works such as 'Romeo and Juliet'8

which has been tentatively dated circa 1910. Its compositional structure and its passionately embracing couple is straight from Munch's painting 'The Kiss' which

was shown in Paris in 1897. This work of O'Conor's more closely resembles one of the prints which Munch pub lished after the success of his painting.

In Paris his subject matter and tech nique changed with his new circum stances, and he painted many nudes in the dim light of his studio in the rue de

Cherche-Midi, of which 'Bleu et Rose'9 is a fine example from a period in his painting between 1910 and 1915 when he was using his paint much more thinly. A number of landscapes which he painted in the South of France at Cassis in 1913 show a distinct Bonnard influence. 'Rose du Ciel', Cassis,10 uses

very little by way of preliminary drawing; the Mediterranean landscape and lush vegetation are reflected in the rather

Self Portrait, Roderic O'Conor, c. 1920. Private Collection, London.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

RODERIC O'CONOR - THE ELUSIVE PERSONALITY

enriched colour range which is present in these paintings.

After the war years more portraits and figures in interiors absorbed his attention. Gradually his paint quality became thicker; the palette knife was used more and more to build up effects of texture, in paintings of flowers which he frequently used as subject matter. 'Roses The' is a tranquil and soothing picture in comparison with some of the brilliant coloured bouquets which made such a contrast to the interior of his otherwise dingy studio. He exhibited this fine painting at the inaugural Salon des Tuileries Exhibition of 1923.

With his advancing years and declin ing health, he had less energy to give to his painting, and gradually the number of works which he was able to paint as he became older, tended to become fewer and fewer. A visit to Spain in 1934/35 reintroduced a landscape theme into his

work, and as with the earlier Cassis paintings a lighter and more immediate touch is apparent, which is quite differ ent to the deliberate modelling of his still lifes of a few years earlier. His last remaining years were spent quietly with his wife Renee, who also painted with him in the countryside around Neuil sur-Layon and when he died there on 18 March 1940, he was interred in the local graveyard.

"Le pere O'Conor; tiens, qu'est-ce qu'il fait a" present?" (Unnamed artist to Clive Bell, Paris, late 1920's)

When O'Conor died, no one outside of his then diminishing circle of friends, confidants and artist colleagues, least of all his fellow countrymen in Ireland, would have had the remotest idea about either the quantity or the quality of his life's work. Under the terms of his will, his widow inherited all of his paintings as well as a substantial private collection which O'Conor had built up over the years through judicious pur chasing of works by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Manet, Redon, Renoir and Modigliani, among others. All of these works remained in her keeping for fifteen years, as well as her own pictures, until her death in 1955, when they were then sold at the Paris auction house of Hotel Drouot,11 early in 1956 in accordance with the wishes of the beneficiaries named in her will. It was

not until later that year that O'Conor's works were seen in sufficient numbers to reveal their content and quality,

when those that had been purchased by the London dealers, Roland, Browse, and Delbanco, were shown in their Cork Street gallery.

If there is one single remark which best summarizes the general lack of information about Roderic O'Conor, even during his lifetime, it is the above quotation from Clive Bell's memoirs published in 1956, sixteen years after O'Conor's death.12 Bell's publication was the first reliable witness account about the Irishman, which he based on a friendship which began in 1904 in Paris and which was still active late in the 1920's. With some justification

O'Conor earned his reputation of being something of a mystery man, and although much more has now been established about his personality, his life style, and the paintings which he produced, there is also much about his character which remains elusive and uncertain.

Clive Bell first met O'Conor in Paris when he was a young Cambridge post graduate student aged twenty-three. O'Conor was then forty four, but the difference in their ages did not stand in the way of their friendship even though

Bell described himeself as "timid" and O'Conor as "the most formidable figure in the quarter." Some of the words

which Bell used to describe O'Conor's

character are far from flattering - "gruff", "disobliging", "misanthropic", "grim", "solitary", "tragic", although he also recognized that he was intelligent, and that as far as literature and painting were concerned, "his taste and judge ment were remarkable." O'Conor's knowledge of French and English literature, and of the Classics, was directly attributable to the pattern of his education at Ampleforth College. The curriculum there stressed these subjects, and the school records show that

O'Conor had wide ranging ability which brought him prizes in disciplines as diverse as Mathematics, Greek, English, Latin, Science, and Chemistry. He was clearly an outstanding pupil, although strangely enough he never received a prize for his art. O'Conor made quite an. impact on Bell, which he duly ack nowledges in his memoirs, through his talk about the most up to date painting

which it was possible to see in Paris and for his conducted tours around the galleries with his friend the Canadian painte.r, James Wilson Morrice.

As for O'Conor he seemed to thrive on this role as the guide and teacher to the younger man, and there is now

more evidence to confirm that it was a position which he had assumed on previous occasions, prior to meeting Bell. For example when the Irishman was in Pont-Aven in 1892-'93, his friendship with the young Swiss artist

Cuno Amiet, although of much shorter duration, was similar in many ways to the later association with Bell. Amiet and O'Conor developed the habit of visiting each other's studio at the end of the working day, to criticize the progress of their paintings.13 It is well known that as far as criticism was concerned,

O'Conor, in his mature years did not hesitate to put down the work of any artist whom he considered to be inferior, even when that artist had an established reputation. What is clear from Amiet's account however, is that there was nothing about O'Conor's criticism then, which was similar in any way to his more pungent and abrasive comments which Bell witnessed in Paris

more than twelve years later. Amiet wrote of O'Conor "he neither pays cheap compliments nor starts making fun of it (his work) but he simply tells

me frankly his opinion. Afterwards I go to his studio and do the same." Amiet

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Self-Portrait, c.1 928. Oil on board. 173/4 x 15.

Private Collection.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW


was, like Bell, particularly flattered with this attention, because he knew that

O'Conor had already earned a reputa tion in Paris, and he was, wrote Amiet, "a painter with a significant talent."

O'Conor's much referred to friend ship in Paris and in Pont-Aven with

Armand Seguin, again significantly with a younger artist, is the best known example of his willingness to assist those less fortunate than himself. O'Conor's association with Seguin, who has been described as "shy", "gentle", "discreet", "frail", "tuberculous", and "poor", began in 1891 and lasted until his death at Serusier's house in Chateauneuf-de Faou in Brittany at the end of 1903 when he was only thirty four.14 Seguin looked to O'Conor for encouragement, and it is therefore all the more regrett able that a manuscript about the School of Pont-Aven, which he intended to publish, was lost, and never appeared in print. In the first of three introductory articles which appeared in 1903 in the journal l'Occident, Seguin, remember ing earlier days wrote...

"His (Gauguin's) pupils surrounded him, all eager for the truth, young and passion ate; later at Pont-Aven, O'Conor and myself were his friends. I will tell every thing in other pages."'15

Had this manuscript then appeared in print, much more would have been known about O'Conor's contribution to the School of Pont-Aven, at an early point in his career.

Seguin's life, according to Wladyslawa Jaworska, was a constant struggle with adversity. O'Conor responded to his friend's predicament with financial help on numerous occasions, and with moral support and encouragement when re quired. The most fruitful period in their artistic association was in 1893, when

both men worked on a series of etch ings at le Pouldu, close to Pont-Aven. Seguin was already an accomplished etcher and passed on the technique to

O'Conor. The Irishman in his turn was an influence on Seguin through his direct approach, particularly in his use of a rhythmic line to build up tonal areas in the details of trees and foliage, in his landscape prints. Their friend ship seems to have been founded on two distinct but separate needs which

both men had. In O'Conor's cage, in

Seguin he had someone on whom he could exercise his knowledge, critical

appraisal, and aesthetic judgements. Seguin had a reciprocal need for guid ance, encouragement, and a strong char acter and positive lead to follow, which he had already received from Gauguin, and which he then found through his friendship with O'Conor. Both men also had in common the fact that they were close to Gauguin, so close in fact that at one stage it was thought by

Gauguin that they would travel back with him on what was to be his last voyage to the South Seas.16

When Gauguin left alone, and the group gradually dispersed throughout Brittany, O'Conor's closest friends, Slewinski, Filiger, and de Chamaillard, and of course Seguin, all maintained contact with him by letter, and when it was possible to do so they arranged visits to see each other's paintings, and to talk about old times. In their letters they reveal their admiration for O'Conor, and there is a genuine warmth of friendship expressed which suggests that when the group was active, O'Conor filled an important role as their adviser and counsellor. In one letter de Chamaillard addressed him as "my dear and excellent friend",17 and Filiger almost begged him to travel to le Pouldu to see him; "Your visit would be most pleasant", he wrote, "oh! one day only - like everything which remains memorable in life. One day, yes!"'18

O'Conor did go to see them of course, travelling by bicycle to get from Pont

Aven to le Pouldu to see Filiger, but there is also evidence in their letters to him that he was becoming increasingly withdrawn and difficult to reach. In some frustration Slewinski wrote to him, "What's become of you? We haven't seen you for a long time."19 Filiger on another occasion entreated him to make contact and send his address.

All the signs point to the likelihood that O'Conor's personality was under going a transformation. With Gauguin gone, he had withdrawn to the much quieter inland village of Rochefort-en Terre, apparently becoming more intro spective and private in his life style. The death of his father in 1893 had already left him with heavy responsibilities to consider, associated with the property and lands which he inherited in Ireland, and there must- have been a point at which he had to decide where his future lay. His own work, apart from some turbulent and colourful seascapes from 1898,20 began to lose its earlier vigour, and the more painterly and expressive approach of his Pont-Aven landscapes was set aside in favour of a more controlled, at times almost naturalistic rendering in his portraits of Breton girls.

There are other indications that he was becoming a more solitary person, more private and withdrawn, in the fact that he

Photograph of R

Photograph of Roderic O'Conor, his wife and friends. Private Collection.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW


did not choose to exhibit any work in Paris between September of 1895 and

March of 1903. This rather confirms the view that there must have been some loss of confidence and an uncertainty about his work, perhaps arising from a period of re-assessment or, search for a new direction. Some paintings thought to be from this period, which have a symbolic content, did notr',ad to anything which could be considered very significant, and were not pursued for very long. In later years O'Conor was known to be distrust ful of the commercial galleries, and it is possible that his disenchantment with the system became an issue around this time. His last exhibition had been in 1895 with the Barc de Bouteville in rue Peletier in Paris, a gallery which was later described as "the true cradle of modern painting". Whether or not any disagree ment developed with the Barc is imposs ible to ascertain, but O'Conor thereafter studiously avoided the commercial gal leries until 1937, when he had his first and only one man exhibition at the

Galerie Bonaparte in Paris. Not even an approach, after his appearance in the inaugural Salon d'Automne of 1903, from the influential dealer Clovis Sagot

who showed Braque's fauvist works in the next year, was sufficient to tempt him back into a commercial setting.21

When Clive Bell met O'Conor, he suspected that there had been some sort of tragedy in O'Conor's life, which had left him lonely and embittered. The death of his father, Gauguin's depart ure, the gradual loss of contact with his friends, and his deliberate decision taken at that time not to exhibit his

work for eight years, are all symptomatic of his solitary existence, and, taken collectively may have been the root cause of his disenchantment. Certainly the O'Conor that Bell met had devel oped characteristics which did not seem to be part of his personality prior to 1895 and his transfer to Rochefort.

When O'Conor returned to Paris he began to exhibit once more at the annual Salon exhibitions, although it has been assumed, quite incorrectly, that he exhibited only rarely during his lifetime. In fact he exhibited in almost sixty group exhibitions between 1883 and his last public appearance in the Galerie Bonaparte three years before his death.22 O'Conor was very much aware of the limitations of the larger Salon

shows and wrote to Bell prior to the 1908 Independants that he would be sending in five or six things, "but in a rout of bad and muddled things do not expect to be seen." 23 However, by choosing to exhibit a few works annually in the crowded Salons, O'Conor rather distarnced himself from that measure of critical analysis to which his work would have been subjected in a one man exhibition. This was very likely a conscious decision on his part, for even at the Barc, his work was always seen in the company of other artists as part of the gallery's policy to present as rich and varied a cross section of new work as possible.

Because O'Conor did have a private income, he did not have to depend on the sale of his pictures for his liveli hood, but some sales were made never theless. From Amiet we know that he sold a painting in the 1892 Independ ants,24 and the painting 'Repos' which the eminent Russian collector Ivan

Morozov bought at the 1905 Independ ants exhibition eventually made its way, in the company of other works by

Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Renoir, into the collection of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, where it can be seen to-day. In his later years,

when he was old and frail, his friend W.T. Cranfield writing of O'Conor's eccentricity also confirmed that he was

quite reluctant to sell his pictures, even to his friends, and that he frequently refused point-blank if there was any hint of a commercial motive.25 The novelist Somerset Maugham experienced just this type of reluctance at the time he bought his first painting from

O'Conor in his studio, and he later explained to Clive Bell that the impres sion which he gained from O'Conor at the time was that through buying his picture he was actually insulting him.26

There was no love lost between O'Conor and Maugham right from the moment of their first meeting at O'Conor's social base in Montparnasse, the Chat Blanc restaurant in rue d'Odessa. Maugham wrote about that first encounter...

"He unfortunately took an immediate dislike to me which he did not hesitate to show. My very presence at the dinner table irritated him and I only had to make a remark for him to attack it."27

Their mutual dislike of one another was commented on by another Chat Blanc regular, the poet and occultist Aleister

Crowley, who stated quite categorically that the man that Somerset Maugham

most hated was Roderic O'Conor. As for O'Conor's attitude to Maugham, Crowley put it thus...

"To O'Conor Maugham was not even funny. He was like a bed bug on which a sensitive man refuses to stamp because of the smell and the squashiness."28

We should not be the least surprised therefore, to discover that when

Maugham borrowed some aspects of O'Conor's personality, initially for the character of O'Brien in his book The

Magician, and later for the character of Clutton in his more ambitious novel, Of Human Bondage, that he presented O'Conor in these fictional disguises in a most uncomplimentary way.29 There is no record of what O'Conor's reaction was to Maugham's words in The Magician.

"That is Mr. O'Brien, who is an example of the fact that strength of will and an earnest purpose cannot make a painter. He's a failure and he knows it, and the bitterness has warped his soul. If you listen to him,

you'll hear every painter of eminence come under his lash. He can forgive nobody who's successful, and he never acknowledges merit in anyone till he's safely dead and buried."s30

It is a reasonable assumption to make,

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

RODERIC O'CONOR-- THE ELUSIVE PERSONALITY

that the appearance in print of such a statement would only have added to

O'Conor's agony, making him even more withdrawn and undermining his confidence. The lack of information about O'Conor's character which has existed for many years, has directed researchers to these two readily avail able texts and has resulted in a widely held view of him which we can recognize in Bell's text, but which has been exaggerated in Maugham's works. As Maugham himself pointed out, Of Human Bondage is essentially a work of fiction in which he has freely adapted and borrowed from places, events, and the characters of those with whom he came in contact.

O'Conor's friendships with Edward Brooks and his son Alden, with Francis Chadwick, Guy Maynard, Milner Kite, Kikoine, Ortiz de Zarate, and his meetings in Paris with Matthew Smith, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry in the 1920's, give no indication that his eccentric personality was, for any of them, unusually difficult. Unfortunately due to what O'Conor called his "natural repugnance to pen and ink", he himself did not write very frequently, but in those few letters of his which have survived there is a certain dry humour present, which was a quality of his

which must have appealed to each of them.

There was too his friendship with Renee Honta, which at least in its initial stages may have arisen for similar reasons to those which helped associate him with Amiet, Seguin, and Bell. They were all significantly younger than

O'Conor, and with them his position was in no danger or under any threat. He was more experienced and know ledgeable than they were, to each of them he was kind and considerate and he had the ! tience to help them along, rather in the way in which a teacher helps a pupil. He did instruct Renee in the art of painting, and she specifically listed him as her"professeur" in bio graphical information which she pre pared in connection with the exhibi tion of a painting.31 His letters to her32 suggest that they were already on inti

mate terms in 1916 when Renee would have been not quite twenty two, and he was then almost fifty six. In spite of this age difference, Renee was the one who stayed closest to him, became his

mistress and then married him in 1933. There is little about his appearance in the photographs taken of him at this time in his life, which would indicate that he had once been the most formid able figure in the Montparnasse district of Paris, but his late self portraits two of which are included here, are full of character and strength, suggesting a personality to which there were many aspects, but which could never be considered to be dull or uninspired.

Roy Johnston

~~~~~I -

Photograph of Roderic O'Conor, c. 1 935. Private Collection.

NOTES

1. Denys Sutton, 'Roderic O'Conor - little

known member of the Pont-Aven cirle,'

Studio, No.811, November 1960, pp.168-174 and 194-196.

2. See the present writer's introduction to the

catalogue, 'Roderic O'Conor (1860-1940),'

Retrospective Exhibition, Barbican Art Gallery, London, and Ulster Museum, Belfast, 1985, and National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1986.

3. O'Conor Catalogue, No.l. 4On the Shore,

Aberystwyth,' and No.2. 'Between the Cliffs,

Aberystwyth.' 4. Idem. Nos.3 and 5 respectively. 5. Idem. No.l 1.

6. Cuno Amiet to his father, letter from Pont

Aven 7 March, 1893. Private Collection, Switzerland.

7. O'Conor Catalogue, No. 12. See also the

present writer's analysis of this work and

others from Pont-Aven in 'Roderic O'Conor in Brittany,' Irish Arts Review, No.l, Spring 1984, pp.12-17.

8. O'Conor Catalogue, No.50.

9. Idem, no.58.

10. Idem. No.63

11. Exposition et Vente O'Conor, Hotel Drouot, 6-7 February, 1956, Paris. The catalogue lists all the works which were in O'Conor's

collection and which were sold on the first

day of the sale, but his own paintings, and those of his wife which were sold on the

second day, were not separately listed as they were sold in lots.

12. Clive Bell, Old Friends, London, 1956. Unless

otherwise stated, all references to Bell which

follow are to Chapter IX, pp. 138-169.

13. Cuno Amiet to his sister, letter from Pont

Aven, 21 December 1892. Private Collection, Switzerland.

14. See Wladyslawa Jaworska, Gauguin and the

Pont-Aven School, London, 1972. Chapter VII

pp. 139-148.

15. Armand Seguin, Paul Gauguin, in l'Occident,

1903, p.163. 16. Gauguin gave this information in a letter to

William Molard sent from Pont-Aven in

September 1894. See Maurice Malingue, ed.

Lettres de Gauguin ? ses femmes et ses amis,

Paris, 1946.

17. de Chamaillard to O'Conor, letter dated

1904. Private Collection, France.

18. Filiger to O'Conor, letter from le Pouldu,

August 1898. Private Collection, France.

19. Slewinski to O'Conor, letter of 7 March, year unknown. Private Collection, France.

20. O'Conor Catalogue, Nos. 21-27.

21. Clovis Sagot to O'Conor, letter dated

November 20, 1903. Private Collection, France.

22. During his exhibiting career, O'Conor showed more than two hundred paintings, of which

sixty-three were shown at the Salon des

Ind?pendants, and seventy-nine at Salon d'Automne Exhibitions. The remainder were

in various other group exhibitions. 23. Roderic O'Conor to Clive Bell, letter dated

18 February '08. ROC/CB No. 6. National

Gallery of Ireland Archives.

24. Amiet to his father, 1893, op. cit.

25. In a letter sent in 1939 to the H i

Commissioner for Ireland in Lohraon. Cran

field's letter sought to have some recognition for O'Conor in Ireland before he died.

National Gallery of Ireland Archives.

26. Maugham to Bell, letter in collection of Charleston Trust.

27. Somerset Maugham, Purely for My Pleasure, London, 1962, pp.7-8.

28. J. Symonds and K. Grant, eds., Confessions of Aleister Crowley, London, 1979, p.349.

29. Somerset Maugham, The Magician, London,

1908, and Of Human Bondage, London, 1915. 30. Idem. p.22. 31. Letter in a Private Collection, France. 32. Private Collection, France.

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Roderic O'Conor: The Elusive Personality

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