Beschreibung:

Roderic O'Conor (1860-1940) Le Drap Blanc or Reclining Female Nude (1907) Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 81.2cm (25 x 32'') Atelier stamp verso Provenance: Vente O'Conor, Crane Kalman Gallery, London, Bernard G. Gore, Peter Nahum, from whom purchased by John P. Reihill, 1979, Deepwell, Blackrock, Co. Dublin Exhibited: -Possibly Le Salon d'Automne, Paris, 1909, Cat. No. 1318, under the title Le Drap Blanc -Collector's Choice Exhibition, Exhibition Hall, Bank of Ireland, Dublin, 1982, Cat. No. 58 -Roderic O'Conor Vision and Expression, The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, 1996, Cat. No. 130 Literature: Roderic O'Conor Jonathan Bennington, 1992, Cat. No.130 , p.205/6 Roderic O'Conor Vision and Expression, Dr. Roy Johnston 1996, p.45, full page colour illustration, p.47 When Roderic O'Conor returned to Paris in 1904, having spent the previous thirteen years painting in Brittany, the studio which he was to occupy in Montparnasse for more than thirty years had been designed and built in the classical tradition of Parisian artist ateliers. Entrance to the studio and living quarters at 102 rue du Cherche-Midi was from the courtyard of his building, where a door gave access to a short flight of stairs leading to an inner door on the first floor. Beyond that was a studio of approximately 80 square metres with a ceiling height of almost 3.5 metres. Its main architectural feature was a continuous ''wall'' of windows constructed of small panes of glass which admitted natural light into an interior, later described by the English critic Clive Bell as ''spacious but gloomy.'' (1) O'Conor used this distinctive window feature, essentially the only light source which was available to him, in several different ways depending on his choice of subject matter. Still life groupings of ceramic objects, with bouquets of brightly coloured flowers, fruit, and vegetables arranged on patterned drapery were typically positioned close to the window. These he viewed from the side, exploiting the light to dark transition he saw in their colour and texture which clearly preoccupied him. He also made portraits and self-portraits and frequently directed his gaze to the analysis of the female form in many paintings of nude models. He usually posed his models in the interior of the studio and took up a viewing position with his back to the window, so that the quality of light in the studio interior was modified, becoming softer and more diffuse. Only rarely did he contrive a viewing position such as that depicted here where an upholstered divan, a frequently used studio prop, was covered with a white sheet and placed with its back close to the window. When he posed his model in this context and stood with his back to the studio interior he was viewing his subject in the traditional 'contre-jour' mode made popular by the Impressionists. One result of this viewing position was that shadows were emphasized, so that the white sheet covering the divan was modified by O'Conor to a mauve tint, through his perceptive analysis of reflected light from the studio interior. As usual, O'Conor has very deliberately set the pose, in this case with the figure extended along the length of the divan to make the most of the interplay of light and dark areas and the changes from one to the other. It is a languid pose, with classical overtones bordering on the romantic rather than the sensual, modified by asking his model to give close visual attention to her raised right arm and hand as she lounged on the supporting divan, her right leg bent and casually tucked under her fully extended left leg. The painting was exhibited by O'Conor at the Salon d'Automne in 1909, among a group of six works. In each case their titles denote his commitment to studio subjects at that time in his career. In that year he also had the distinction of being elected to serve as the Vice-President of the Salon d'Automne jury along with Charles Plumet the noted Partisian architect and designer of furniture and interiors i