JOHN O’CONNOR R.W.S.,
A.R.C.A. (1913 – 2004)
“Girl in August”
Oil Painting on Canvas.
30” x 24” (763 x 610mm)
Signed. Exhibited the Zwemmer Gallery, London 1964 IMAGE
John O’Connor was a painter, illustrator and wood engraver,
printmaker, writer and teacher. He was
born in Leicester on 11th August 1913. He attended Wyggeston School and studied art at
Leicester College of Art from 1934 to 1937 under Eric Ravilious and John Nash, who was a long-time friend. He served in the Royal Air Force from 1941 to 1946 after which he
continued his teaching career which began at Birmingham College of Art in 1937
and Bristol College of Art from 1938 to 1941, by becoming principal of Colchester
School of Art from 1948 to 1964. He worked
as a visiting lecturer at St. Martin’s School of Art from 1964 to 1974. He was a
Member of the Royal Society of Watercolour Painters and an Associate Member of
the Royal College of Art. He had one-man shows at the Zwemmer
Gallery from 1955 to 1968, Clare College (1965), New Grafton Gallery
(1970 – 1980), Broughton Gallery, Borders (1978 onwards) and exhibited
regularly in mixed shows at the Royal Academy. Retrospective exhibitions
were held at the John Russell Gallery, Ipswich in 1999 and in 2003 Bourne
Fine Art, Edinburgh held an exhibition of his wood engravings. Abbott and Holder showed O’Connor’s 1950s
watercolours of Essex and Suffolk in 2004, when he had a joint exhibition with
John Nash at the New Grafton Gallery. A
memorial exhibition was held at the John Russell Gallery in 2005-06. Work by John O’Connor is in the permanent
collections of New York Public Library, Columbia University and the public galleries of
Oxford, Cambridge and other Universities and
Colleges. The Arts Council, the Tate
Gallery and the British Museum also hold examples of his
work. Publications (written and
illustrated) include Canals, Barges and
People (Shenval Press 1950), Landscape Painting (1967), The
Technique of Wood Engraving (1971), Introducing
Relief Painting (1973), A View of Kilvert (1981) and A
Pattern of People (Hutchinson). He
illustrated books for Golden Cockerel Press, Dropmore
Press, Boston Imprint, Limited Editions Club, New York; Florin Press and Whittington
Press, who issued The Wood Engravings of
John O’Connor in 1989. O’Connor wrote in 1989 that he retained “a
search for timelessness in subject matter and in mood of painting with
avoidance of material that dates or humanises the picture. Also, I seek unusual weather
conditions”. He lived latterly at Parton, Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbrightshire
and died in Dumfries in 2004.
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