In the aftermath of the First World War, progressive artists such as Picasso and Matisse relinquished some of the innovatory zeal that had previously coloured their work. The pre-war headlong rush to break new ground thus experienced a slow-down, and there was a brief return to more straightforward figurative idioms such as classicism and Impressionism. O’Conor, as can be seen in this rare, dated nude from the beginning of the new decade, was not immune to this trend. His inspiration seems to have come from the bathers pictures of Renoir and the classical nymphs of Rubens.

Reclining Nude is an accomplished and arresting tribute to female beauty. The model sleeps lying on her side, her legs pulled up for modesty’s sake whilst her head and shoulder rest on a cushion. A second bolster has been positioned behind the model, bringing her upper body closer to the viewer’s gaze. The cropping of the model’s ankles and feet by the lower edge of the canvas reinforces the feeling of proximity, as does the very direct and even fall of light.

The artist, in other words, does everything in his power to focus attention on the shape, colour, texture and mass of the forms he is describing, and beyond that, to render palpable the “gleam of light and warmth and life” which Sickert described as the chief source of pleasure in a nude.

In the 1920s, O’Conor chose models who were young, pretty, of slender build and furnished with up-to-the-minute bobbed hairstyles. That these pictures were admired by his peers is confirmed by the fact that the noted art critic, Roger Fry bought an example directly from O’Conor, on behalf of the Contemporary Art Society (now in Derby Art Gallery). Reclining Nude could have been one of the pictures Fry saw in O’Conor’s studio on the occasion of his purchasing visit in 1924.

Fry would have been the first to notice that, however much the picture might owe to Renoir, it was still very much a product of its time. The subject is a modern, fashionable young woman. It is to O’Conor’s credit that, despite being in his sixties, he was not locked in the mindset of an earlier generation struggling to keep pace with the times. The 1920s was the era of jazz and jive, flapper dresses and the movies, and aside from his models, we can be sure that the artist’s young mistress, Renée Honta, helped to keep him informed about current trends.

Jonathan Benington