aloysius o'kelly in brittany

Irish Arts Review

Aloysius O'Kelly in BrittanyAuthor(s): Julian CampbellSource: Irish Arts Review Yearbook, Vol. 12 (1996), pp. 80-84Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20492883 .

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ALOYSIUS O'KELLY IN BRITTANY

The Breton subject-matter of many of the artist's pictures is

examined by Julian Campbell

Among the paintings by Aloysius O'Kelly which have come to light in recent years, many have been of Breton sub

jects. Viewers have often been puzzled at the variety of styles

attaching to these works. This is compounded by the different dates given for O'Kelly's birth, and the artist's indication in later

exhibition catalogues that he was American-born.' The fact is

that there were two distinct Breton periods in his career: the

first at Pont-Aven in the late 1870s, when he was in his twen

ties; the second, at Concarneau thirty years later. This article

will consider briefly O'Kelly's Breton oeuvre, attempting a pre cise dating of pictures and identification of locations, and relat

ing him to his contemporaries. O'Kelly had studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He

entered Gerome's atelier on 7 October 1874.2 His address was at

4 Rue St. Sulpice, near to the Ecole. Gerome was a successful

academic and Orientalist, who had opened his studio in 1863; in

1874 he had just retumed from a trip to the Middle East. Two of

his French students, Abram and Dagnan Bouveret, were later to

2. (Above) Aloysius O'KELLY (1851-c.1928): The Feny, Concameau. Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 93cm. Signed c.1906. (Private Collection). O'Kelly features the ferry point at the end of the walled town (Ville Close), Concameau, and the Passage Lanriec opposite. Probably set at evening, O'Kelly's figure subjects of the early-twentieth century

have a liveliness of outline, while his harbour scenes at Concameau show a new-found impressionism.

1. (Opposite) Aloysius O'KELLY: Old Couple at the Door of an Inn. Oil on canvas, 48 x 38cm. Signed. c. 1876-77. (Private Collection). Probably one of O'Kelly's earliest out door subjects, and painted at Pont-Aven in the late 1870s.

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work in Brittany. Gerome had a reputation for being tolerant to

American students, amongst whom in this period were Thomas Eakins, Alden Weir and Alexander Harrison. British students included William Stott and William Bartlett. Of most signifi cance to O'Kelly would have been the arrival in the atelier

shortly after him of the Boston-bom painter William Picknell.3

Probably later in the 1870s, O'Kelly studied in the private ate

lier of Bonnat in Montmartre, which also attracted foreigners.4 Amongst these were Sargent, Stanhope Forbes, Walter Gay and

William Lippincott. French students included Caillebotte and, later, Toulouse-Lautrec. Bonnat was a successful portraitist, with an admiration for Velasquez. O'Kelly also had great respect for

his assistant, Gabriel Ferrier.5 From these teachers, O'Kelly would have received an academic training, a strength of figure drawing,

and perhaps an interest in

Oriental subjects. But of equal importance was the fact that in

summer time many of Gerome's

and Bonnat's students (includ ing all those mentioned above) gravitated towards Brittany.

O'Kelly may have first

arrived at Pont-Aven in sum

mer 1876, the same time as

another Irish-born artist, Thomas Hovenden, and shortly after Augustus Burke from Dublin. A colony of American

painters, under the dominant

figure of Robert Wylie, had developed over the previous decade,6 and O'Kelly joined this

community. He set about paint

ing market and street scenes, villagers playing bowls, and landscapes.7 Old Couple at the

Door of an Inn8 (Fig. 1), is prob

ably one of his earliest Breton

works, with its intense realism (particularly in the headdress and costume of the woman),

the dramatic contrast of light

and shadow, which was a char

acteristic of the outdoor scenes

of the early Pont-Aven school,

and the neat, forward-sloping signature. The simple decora tion in the stonework is charac

teristic of the Pont-Aven region.9 The composition of two

figures beside an open door is

remarkably close to that of

Burke's At the Chapel Door,

1876, indicating a similar date.'0

The Evening Pipe (Fig. 5)

shows a villager with broad

rimmed hat, loose trousers and

clogs, leaning over the hearth.

The convincina drawing and

relaxed composition are evidence of O'Kelly's Paris training, while the costume and interior detail indicate his developing interest in rural life. O'Kelly's work also shows admiration for

Courbet, the dominant influence upon the Pont-Aven School,

3. Aloysius O'KELLY: Breton Woman Cleaning Bowls. Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 53.5cm. Signed and dated 1909. (Private Collection). Although painted at Concarneau in 1909, the subject recalls the 'Dutch'-style interiors popular amongst artists

at Pont-Aven in the 1860s and 1870s.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW




even in the style of signature. His use of a rounded 'a' for 'Aloysius' or 'al' and the slightly backward-sloping signature,

characterises this early Breton work (indeed his oeuvre up to

the early 1890s). Picknell had by this time become one of the leading figures at

Pont-Aven, and his beautifully-realised landscapes made an impact upon O'Kelly." Both artists painted the classic view of

the harbour at Pont-Aven, with its fishing boats, waterfront and

church spire, nestling in a wooded landscape. Compared to

Picknell's more detailed version, dated 1879, O'Kelly's landscape (Fig. 4) has a simplicity and

lightness of touch, with delicate hues placed upon a warm pink

ground. The harbour was also

painted by Gaston Roullet in

1878, Walter Osborne in 1883, and featured in picture postcards

around 1900.12

Two of O'Kelly's portraits, of an old woman seated and of a

girl, hung in the collection of the Pension Gloanec for many

years.'3 Although the work of

O'Kelly, Burke and Hovenden shows differences of emphasis, these three artists may be seen

as comprising an informal Irish

group at Pont-Aven, and were

the first Irish 'School' in

Brittany.'4 It is possible that O'Kelly made a return visit to

Finistere around 1885; he paint

ed a portrait of a Breton man

(See p. 95). This was praised in

the Dublin University Review in

1885, as 'the best work' that

O'Kelly had shown at the Royal

Hibernian Academy thus far.'5

After painting variously in Connemara, England and Egypt,

O'Kelly seems to have left for

America in 1895.6 Then, sud denlv. he reaDpeared in Brittany

in 1908-09,'7 perhaps as early as 1905.18 He was now based at

Concameau, which had succeeded Pont-Aven as the most popu

lar artists' colony. He lodged at the Hotel de France, where the

Dublin-born painter W J Leech was staying in 1906.'9 O'Kelly

worked intensively. His Concameau oeuvre is diverse, and can

be divided into six loose categories: interiors with figures; out

door figure subjects; close-up portraits of fishermen or women; studies of the harbour; landscapes; and small sketches of the mar

ket. On the one hand, his interiors show a nostalgia for the

indoor subjects of Hovenden and Wylie at Pont-Aven thirty

years earlier, on the other hand, his harbour scenes are light and

colourful, with a new embracing of impressionism. The interiors show an interest in Breton domestic life, for

instance, women in the kitchen, spinning wool, or sitting around the fire, at an inn or celebrating a child's christening. Breton

Woman Cleaning Bowls (Fig. 3) 1909, has a warm, burnished

tone, with a skilful rendering of still-life detail. The woman sits in relaxed pose, while light falls on her face and bonnet. In The

Christening Party, 1908, and other interiors, the presence of a

small casement window, through which the harbour at Concarneau and fishing boats

can be glimpsed, has an alluring

quality, unconsciously echoing Caspar Friedrich's magical paint ing Woman by a Window.20

Some of O'Kelly's Concameau paintings have a strong narrative

element. He had no shyness in

taking on subjects with different types of figures: girls, children and old men. The decorative

white bonnets of the women, with four 'lapettes', were charac teristic of Concarneau; in Pont

Aven, bonnets had two 'lapettes'.2' O'Kelly's interiors are curiously old-fashioned for their date, reminiscent even of Dutch

interiors.22 Yet it would be sim

plistic to say that they were

painted solely for the market;

there is a personal sense of enjoy

ment in them. Amongst his out

door subjects, the evening scene The Ferry (Fig. 2) c. 1906 shows

the Passage Lanriec, at the end of

Concarneau's walled town23

where a ferry (now motorised)

still plies across the sound. The

figures have a relaxation in pose

and liveliness in outline, different

from the earlier Pont-Aven naintin rs.24 An imnressionistic

influence, present in the sunny housefronts and rippling reflec tions, is even more evident in O'Kelly's radiant harbour scenes,

notably Harbour Scene, Concarneau, and Awaiting the Return,

Concarneau, with their light brush strokes, and tones of blue and

pink, maroon and turquoise.25 Similar studies of the harbour and fishing fleet were painted by many of the artists resident at

Concameau, for instance, Leech, Fromuth, Terrick Williams and

Bulfield. Yet O'Kelly's paintings are amongst the most pure

examples of Impressionism by an Irish artist.

O'Kelly exhibited two Breton subjects, La Sortie and Devant le

4. Aloysius O'KELLY: View of the Harbour - Pont-Aven. Oil on canvas, 66 x 45.7cm. Signed. c.1878. (Private Collection). O'Kelly shows the view of

the harbour, le Port en Amont, and town of Pont-Aven from downstream. This view was depicted by several artists in the period and became popular

in postcards about 1900.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW




5. Aloysius O'KELLY: The Evening Pipe. Oil on canvas, 44.5 x 53cm. Signed. c.1877. (Private Collection). Probably painted at Pont-Aven in the late

1870s, this canvas shows O'Kelly's early interest in interiors and his skill in figure drawing.

Feu at the Paris Salon in 1908, and two, L'auberge and "'Ave

Maria", procession religieuse en Bretagne' in 1909.26 The latter, set

before the Ville Close, may be one of his largest and most

crowded compositions. The charming painting Corpus Christi Procession (AIB Collection, Dublin) may well be a study for it.

His Concarneau paintings bear a squarer, crisper signature

than previously, with a capital 'A' for his Christian name.27 His

first and second Breton periods, at Pont-Aven and at

Concarneau, can thus be identified by means of signature, and

by the costume and location of their subject, as well as through

stylistic analysis. By December 1909, O'Kelly had returned to New York. He

brought with him many of his Breton pictures. He tried to inter

est the Macbeth Gallery in his work, but without success.28

However, he exhibited his Breton paintings at Moulton and

Rickett's Gallery in 1912. O'Kelly was now sixty but, as Homan

Potterton details (pp.91-95), life in America was not necessarily easy for the Irish artist.

DR JULLAN CAMPBELL is a tutor in History of Art at the Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork

1. Catalogues of Paris Salon, 1908-1909. O'Kelly described himself as 'n? a New York (Etats Unis d'Am?rique)'. The date of birth given in

the registers of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, June 1851, would seem to be the most authentic.

Although O'Kelly provided the month and

year, he was the only student not to give the

day of birth.

2. Registers of Ecole des Beaux Arts, Archives

Nationales de France A.J. 52-248. 3. Registers of Ecole des Beaux Arts, ibid. See

also H. Barbara Weinberg, The American

Pupils of fean-L?on G?r?me, Fort Worth, 1984.

4. See Gerald Ackerman, 'Thomas Eakins and

his Parisian Masters G?r?me and Bonnat', Gazette des Beaux Arts, April 1969, p.235-56. Bonnat allowed foreign students to pay by the

class. O'Kelly may have studied with Bonnat in the late 1870s, between visits to Brittany;

certainly prior to 1882, when Bonnat became a teacher at the Ecole.

5. He listed Ferrier's and Bonnat's names in

Salon catalogues for 1884, and 1908-1909.

Interestingly, he did not include G?r?me's name on either occasion.

6. See Robert Sellin, Americans in Normandy and

Brittany, catalogue of exhibition, Phoenix Art

Museum, Phoenix, 1982; and Michael Jacobs, The Good and Simple Life, Artist Colonies in

Europe and America, Oxford, 1985.

7. O'Kelly exhibited a handful of Breton subjects at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Royal

Society of British Artists and Royal Academy, 1876-79. (Street Scene, Brittany, his first exhib it at the RHA, 1878 cat.no. 168, is not includ

ed in Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts Index of Exhibitors 1826-1970)

8. All pictures referred to in the text are in

private collections, unless otherwise stated. 9. This old building has not been identified, but

may have been in the old Rue du Abbes

Tanguy, Pont-Aven, and is characteristic of

vernacular architecture in this region. 10. See Julian Campbell, Onlookers in France, Irish

Realist and Impressionist Painters, exh. cat.

Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, 1993. cat. no. 7.

The shadowy figure of the girl inside the door

way is later echoed by the maid on the left of

O'Kelly's Christening Party. 11. For information on Picknell, see Sellin, op.cit.-,

and William Lamb Picknell, 1853-1897, by Lauren Robb and David Sellin, exh. cat.,

Taggart and Jorgensen Gallery, New York, 1991. Picknell also used a 'Courbet-like'

signature. 12. Picknell's painting of the harbour is in

Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix; Roullet's in

Mus?e de Pont-Aven; Osborne's in a private collection.

13. I am grateful to Mme Catherine Puget, Director of the Mus?e de Pont-Aven, for pro

viding me with this information. The portraits are now in the Gloanec family collection.

14. See J. Campbell, 'Irish Artists in Brittany, 1860-1914', Irlande et Bretagne, Vingt Si?cles

d'Histoire, (?d.) Catherine Laurent and Helen

Davis, Rennes, 1994, p.228-35. 15. Un Breton de Finist?re, exhibited at RHA and

Irish Artisans Exhibition, 1885; A Vendean of Finist?re, Brittany, RA, 1886. See Julian

Campbell The Irish Impressionists, exh. cat., National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1984, cat.

no. 24. The portrait exhibited in 1984 is not

O'Kelly's 1885 portrait, but belongs to his

later Concarneau period. 16. O'Kelly ceased exhibiting at the RHA and at

British exhibitions in 1895. In going to

America, O'Kelly may have been hoping to

establish contact with old associates from

Pont-Aven. But Hovenden died in 1895, Picknell in 1897.

17. Catalogue of Paris Salons, 1908-09.

18. His Breton painting, The Stained Glass

Window is dated 1905. (Exhibited at Cynthia O'Connor Gallery, Dublin, July

- August

1994, cat. no. 1). 19. In 1908-09, Leech was staying at the nearby

Voyageurs. (Catalogues of RHA and ROI,

1906-09) For information on Leech, see

Denise Ferran, 'WJ Leech's Brittany', Irish Arts Review, 1993, p.224-232.

20. Staatsgalerie, Berlin.

21. I am very grateful to Mme. Catherine Puget, Director of the Mus?e de Pont-Aven, for pro

viding me with information on Breton region al costumes.

22. See The Irish Impressionists, op. cit. p. 164. For

example, O'Kelly's Spinning Wheel, Brittany, C.1908 recalls paintings of spinners, made pop ular by artists such as Abram, Peel, Hagborg and Van den Anker, in the early 1880s. The

Christening Party, 1908 bears comparison with interiors by Wylie as early as the 1860s, and

with Trayer's Marchand de crepe ? Quimperl?, 1866 (Mus?e des Beaux Arts, Rennes).

23. Le Passage was also depicted by French artist

Lucien Gros.

24. See The Ferry, in 'Irish Paintings', Gorry

Gallery, Dublin, April-May 1988, p.12.

Catalogue entry by J Campbell. 25. These pictures were exhibited in The Irish

Impressionists, 1984, cat. no. 28; and Onlookers in France, 1993, cat. no. 10, respectively.

26. Catalogues of Paris Salon, 1908-09.

27. All those Breton paintings exhibited in The

Irish Impressionists, bearing this upright signa ture with a capital 'A', belong to O'Kelly's

Concarneau period, c. 1905-09.

28. In late December, 1909, O'Kelly was writing to the Macbeth Gallery, New York, from a

New York address. See The Irish Impressionists op. cit., p. 124.

84

IRISH ARTS REVIEW



aloysius o'kelly in brittany

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