Irish Arts Review

The Romantic Landscapes of James Arthur O'ConnorAuthor(s): John HutchinsonSource: Irish Arts Review (1984-1987), Vol. 2, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), pp. 50-55Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20491830 .

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

THE ROMANTIC LANDSCAPES OF JAMES ARTHUR O'CONNOR

In the later years of the 18th century, largely because of the impact on

current thought of Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beauti ful, there arose in Britain and Ireland a new awareness of the dramatic and awe inspiring qualities of nature. The 'Sub lime' aspect of a landscape, that is to say its more rough and rugged characterist ics, came to be held in opposition to the 'Beautiful' - the calm, serene side of nature, as expressed in the pastoral paintings of Claude Lorraine. The archetype of the 'Sublime' was to be found in the works of Salvator Rosa, then regarded as a wild and mettle some fellow, whose passionate aspira tions were represented by his paintings of banditti set in suitably desolate surroundings. Rosa, in fact, produced a

more varied oeuvre than was then

popularly supposed, but there are, nevertheless, elements in his work that can be taken as the essence of his idiom - broken, gnarled trees, harshly-lit rocks, dark stormy clouds, and other equally dramatic motifs.

It is readily evident that these features are prominent in the 'Stormy Landscape' that is attributed to George Barret, a painting that closely reflects a

picture once ascribed to Salvator Rosa.1 The dimensions of the latter are not quite as square as those of the Barret; the foliage is denser, and the central branch of the tree extends beyond the span of its counterpart in the Irish painting, but the two paintings are sub stantially alike. Whether or not the Barret is a copy of the Italian picture, the 'Stormy Landscape' certainly suggests that Barret was experimenting with

Burke's notions about the 'Sublime'. The extent and nature of Burke's

influence on Barret are uncertain: Pilkington2 maintains that the artist had an inclination to draw his inspiration from the scenery of the Dargle valley in

Co. Wicklow, and that Burke urged him to look at pictures instead, but Bodkin and Strickland3 both agree that Burke advised the young artist to go to 'Nature' for instruction. In any case,

John Hutchinson prepared the catalogue for the current National

Gallery of Ireland exhibition, "James Arthur O'Connor and the Romantic Landscape". Here, he writes of the background to that

landscape painting and the development of O'Connor's

mature romanticism.

o~~~~~

AA

Stormy Landscape, once attributed to Salvator Rosa, and attributed to Marcantonio Sardi when sold at Sotheby's, London, 27th October 1976, Lot 56. Courtesy Sotheby's.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

THE ROMANTIC LANDSCAPES OF JAMES ARTHUR O'CONNOR

Barret would undoubtedly have absorbed some of Burke's ideas about the the 'Sublime' and the 'Beautiful': thoughts

which were to be expanded in the Inquiry published in 1756, some six years before Barret left Ireland to work in England. If the 'Stormy Landscape' is correctly given to Barret, which is very likely, it is a paradigm of Burkean 'Sublimity'.

The concept of the 'Sublime', how ever, which was firmly established in 18th century aesthetics, was soon to be transformed by the development of

Romantic landscape painting, in which a human being, as opposed to the land scape itself, was frequently the emotional pivot of a picture. In that sense, the 'Thunderstorm' by William Ashford (signed and dated 1780), lies between the 'Sublime' and 19th century Romanti cism. The painting's subject-matter is

rather more complex than that of the Barret; it includes a rugged tree, billow ing dark clouds and a desolate land scape, but unlike the earlier composi tion, the Ashford sustains more diverse themes than simply that of 'Sublimity'; the eye is free to concentrate on the human interest of the wagon-driver helping a fellow-traveller in need, or to wander through the fields on the left, towards the steeple that rises sharply into the sky. The artist has widened his field of vision, and, in so doing, has lost a certain degree of the immediate impact of the Barret.

In the mature Romanticism of James Arthur O'Connor's 'Frightened

Wagoner', however, that immediacy is regained; one may initially be drawn to the windswept tree in the foreground, to the cascading river, or even to the bolt of lightning that bursts startlingly

into view, but the eye is inevitably drawn to the centre of the painting, to the wagon-driver, solitary and afraid,

who stands beside his fallen horses. Yet the similarity between the Ashford and the O'Connor is striking: the wagons are of the same shape, with hooped canvas coverings; the drivers are both wearing hats and loose smocks, and hold identical whips and, albeit on opposite sides of the compositions, both works show lightning cutting through stormy clouds. The resem blance is particularly interesting because of the chronological disparity between the two paintings: 'The Frightened

Wagoner' was painted in 1832, fifty years after the Ashford.

There is, furthermore, another curious parallel between the two paintings. 'The Thunderstorm' was used as an illustra tion to a poem by Samuel Whyte which

George Barret ( 728/32-1784), A Stormy Landscape, National Gallery of Ireland, No. 1760.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

THE ROMANTIC LANDSCAPES OF JAMES ARTHUR O'CONNOR

was published in 17954, and although there is nothing to prove that O'Connor

was directly influenced by literary Romanticism, there is a strong affinity between O'Connor's painting and

Wordsworth's The Waggoner of 1819: 'The rain rushed down - the road was

battered, As with the force of billows shattered; The horses are dismayed, nor know

Whether they should stand or go; And Benjamin is groping near them. He is astounded, - wonder not - With such a charge in such a spot; Astounded in the mountain gap With thunder-peals, clap after clap, Close-treading on the silent flashes - And somewhere, as he thinks, by crashes Among the rocks; with weight of rain, And sullen motions long and slow, That to a dreary distance go - Till, breaking in upon the dying strain, A rending o'er his head begins the fray

again'.

The emotional intensity of 'The Frightened Wagoner' is greater than that of Ashford's 'Thunderstorm'; it is also more personal. The driver is the focus of the painting; he stands, perhaps, as a symbol of the artist, as a microcosm of humanity. Here 'Sublime' desolation becomes subjective and oppressive, lightened only by the stylized poses of the driver and the horses. 'The Thunderstorm', in contrast, is not filled with the 'presence' of the artist, for although the scene is equally dramatic, one senses a certain detachment on the part of the painter.

A painting by O'Connor that matches 'The Frightened Wagoner' in intensity is 'The Eagle's Rock, Killarney', in which the artist creates a profound image of

Romantic solitude. (It is significant that the view is supposed to be topographic ally precise, as many of O'Connor's later pictures appear to be eclectic in

their derivation.) Most of O'Connor's Romantic landscapes, including this one, use strong chiaroscuro to heighten their impact, and in 'The Eagle's Rock' the single figure is isolated in the light,

which enables him to dominate the picture, despite his relatively small scale. He faces the viewer, a gun under one arm and a dead bird in his other hand, staring straight ahead of him. He is set on a craggy rise, contrasted against a dark ravine, and high above him heavy grey clouds billow in an intensely blue sky. The foreground plane of rocks, given depth and definition by a modul ated play of ochre impasto, extends right across the picture and rises again on the left hand side, in the form of a boulder, which acts as a compositional balance to the hunter. Behind the rock, in the middle distance, is a great, gnarled tree, reminiscent of the one in 'The Frightened Wagoner'.

James Arthur O'Connor (c. 1792-1841), A Thunderstorm: The Frightened Wagoner, signed and dated 1832, National Gallery of Ireland, No. 4041.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

THE ROMANTIC LANDSCAPES OF JAMES ARTHUR OtCONNOR

Colonel Grant, in Old English Land scape Painters5, wrote of 'The Eagle's Rock': 'It is to be feared that the illus tration shows little of the very excel lence which constitutes the superiority of this picture to the general run. That superiority is entirely in the handling,

which is here that of a Master inspired by a scene of singular savagery and beauty, the ravines behind the 'Eagles's Nest' at Killarney. It is no exaggeration to declare that Constable might have painted the sky and Crome the remain der of this fine piece, not that there is an imitation of either, but merely a rivalry with the power of both'. As

Grant suggests, O'Connor was prob ably influenced by Constable in this painting, for the rich, lively texture of the paint brings to mind the latter's technique, and in the contrast between the vibrant blue of the sky and the lowering clouds there is an echo of

Constable's moody landscapes of the late 1820's. Yet, when the point is pressed, it is difficult to find any exactly comparable works in contemporary English painting.

O'Connor's images of Romantic isolation sometimes took another guise:

more than once he painted solitary monks standing in rocky valleys by dark rivers. In the 1830s, when O'Connor

was painting in this vein, the theme of a lonely monk in a landscape was well established; it can be traced from Salvator Rosa, through Richard Wilson, to Caspar David Friedrich, whose 'Monk by the Sea' of 1809 is probably the most potent realization of the idea. Like so many Romantic motifs, it was formalized in the late 18th century, as the following quotation illustrates. It is taken from a novel by M.G. Lewis, The

Monk6, which, after its publication in 1796, became quite celebrated:

'The disorder of his imagination was increased by the influence of the surround ing scenery; ... .the gloomy caverns and steep rocks, rising above each other, and dividing the passing clouds; solitary clusters of trees scattered here and there, among whose thick twined branches the wind of night sighed hoarsely and mournfully; ... the stunning roar of torrents, as swelled by late ruins they rushed violently down tremendous precipices; and the dark waters of a silent sluggish stream, which faintly reflected the moonbeams, and bathed the rock's base on which Ambrose (the monk) stood'.

'The Poachers', probably the most distinguished of O'Connor's moonlight scenes, and arguably his finest painting, was described by Bodkin in Four Irish Landscape Painters as being 'steeped in Irish sentiment', but although the picture may be Irish in setting and mood, its Romanticism - like that of 'The Frightened Wagoner' - can be set

William Ashford (c. 1746-1824) The Thunderstorm, 1780, courtesy Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

THE ROMANTIC LANDSCAPES OF JAMES ARTHUR O'CONNOR

James Arthur O'Connor, The Eagle's Rock, Killarney. Richard Wood Collection.

in a more general context. Yet again one finds a parallel in Wordsworth's poem A Night Piece, 1815:

The sky is overcast With a continuous cloud of texture close Heavy and wan all whitened by the Moon, Which through that veil is indistinctly seen. A dull, contracted circle, yielding light So feebly spread that not a shadow falls, Chequering the ground - from rock, plant,

tree, or tower. At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam Startles the pensive traveller while he treads His lonesome path, with unobserving eye Bent earthwards, he looks up - the clouds

are split Asunder, - and above his head he sees The clear Moon, and the glory of the

heavens...

Pictorially, 'The Poachers' is an immensely assured piece of work. Stand ing on a path which is brightened by specks of light impasto, the three figures, shadows cast behind them, hold a central position, framed on the left by a clump of trees, on the right by a bank of bushes, while directly above them lies the bright moon, encircled by billowing clouds. Thus the composition is con

ventionally arranged, but the distinct ion of this painting is to be found in the way O'Connor leads the eye into the view, from foreground to back ground, by means of a brilliant under standing of tone: every element in the picture is distinct, yet unified by a subtlety of colouring. The atmosphere,

moody but not oppressive, is accom plished by a skilful blend of blues and greens.

The Romanticism which distinguishes O'Connor's moonlight paintings from those by earlier artists such as Aert van der Neer, stresses the relationship between the individual and the uni versal or, in this case, between the poachers and the lonely expanses of landscape in which they stand. The figures are detached enough from their surroundings to appear somewhat iso lated, yet they remain integral to the unity of the whole. O'Connor achieves this effect by dramatically illuminating the small figures with the moonlight, and further increases the tension by contrasting the stillness of the poachers with the implied movement of the

clouds - thereby creating a sense of timelessness, as if a particular moment on that dark night had been captured and suspended indefinitely. In pictures such as this, O'Connor expresses a Romantic vision that is both personal and generic, which is, as such, a significant juncture in the development of Irish painting.

John Hutchinson

NOTES

1. The painting has been attributed to

Marcantonio Sardi. See catalogue of Sotheby's sale on October 27th, 1976 (lot 56, Illus. pi.

VIII). 2. Rev. M. Pilkington, A Dictionary of Painters,

London, 1805, p.33. 3. Bodkin, Four Irish Landscape Painters, Dublin

& London, 1920, p.2; W. Strickland, A

Dictionary of Irish Artists, Dublin & London,

1913, Vol.1 p.29. 4. A. Crookshank and The Knight of Glin, The

Painters of Ireland, London, 1978, p. 134. 5. Col. M.H. Grant, Old English Landscape

Painters, Leigh-on-Sea, 1957-61, Vol.8, p.640, illus. 670.

6. Quoted by E. Manwaring, kalian Landscape in

18th Century England, New York, 1925, p.218.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

THE ROMANTIC LANDSCAPES OF JAMES ARTHUR O'CONNOR

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