O'Conor, Roderic (1860–1940)

Irish painter whose work occupies a significant place in the history of Post-Impressionism. While he was influenced by the work of Van Gogh and Gauguin in the 1890s, he retained his own distinctive artistic personality. Gauguin, a particular admirer of his work, dedicated two prints to O'Conor and invited him to accompany him on his return to Tahiti in 1895.

O'Conor was born in County Roscommon, into a family descended from the high kings of Ireland. He was educated at Ampleforth, England, and began his artistic studies in Dublin and Antwerp before moving to Paris in 1888. There the milieu of the avant-garde seems to have sparked his individual creativity. Much of his best-known work was inspired by the coastline and rural society of Brittany in the north of France. In his most radical paintings, such as Farm at Lezaven (1894; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) and Woman Knitting (Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin), he took a deliberately unnatural approach to colour, anticipating the experiments of the Fauves in the early 1900s. He lived in Paris, where he knew Picasso and Matisse, from 1904 until his death. Increasingly reclusive, he exhibited only once in these years, in 1933.