Scenes of Ulster Life: The Paintings and Drawings of William Conor

Irish Arts Review

Scenes of Ulster Life: The Paintings and Drawings of William ConorAuthor(s): Eileen BlackSource: Irish Arts Review Yearbook, Vol. 18 (2002), pp. 146-152Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25488318 .

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Scenes of Ulster Life

The Paintings and Drawings of William Conor

Eileen Black

discusses the art of one of the North's

most popular painters

Looking

back on his career, William

Conor (Fig 2) summed up the chief

focus of his work with an appealing directness: 'AH my life I have been com

pletely absorbed...with affection in the

activities of the Belfast people... Being a

Belfast man myself it has been my ambi

tion to reveal the Spiritual Character of

its people in all vigour, in all its senses of

life, in all its variety, in all its passion,

humanity and humour...'1 Though the

mills, shawled women and ragged chil

dren of his paintings of the 'twenties,

'thirties, and 'forties have long gone, his

standing as 'The People's Painter' as a

recent publication hailed him, remains

as high today as when his well-known

figure, with black soft hat and floppy bow tie, strolled the city streets.2

Like the people he so often portrayed, Conor's origins were working class. Born

on 9 May 1881 in a modest street in

north Belfast, he was one of seven chil

dren of Mary and William Connor.

(The second 'n' in the family name was

dropped by Conor in the early 1910s). At the tender age of thirteen, he

entered the Belfast Government School

of Art, his talent having been spotted by a neighbour of the school's headmaster,

who had observed him drawing in chalk on a wall. He remained at the school for

ten years, during which time he won

prizes for model drawing, life drawing, anatomy, and the antique. Amongst his

fellow students was Paul Henry, whose

artistic appearance and style of dress

was noted by Conor with perhaps a cer

tain degree of admiration. Paul, he rec

ollected, 'wore his hair right down to his

shoulders and he had a black hat and a

great bow tie, white shirt, black velvet

jacket, and peg-top trousers which were

narrow at the ankles and wide at the

hips'3 It seems not too far-fetched to

speculate that this artistic attire may

have been the inspiration for Conor's

own black hat and bow tie, as Judith

2. William CONOR (1881-1968): Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. c.1920. Oil on board, 54.9 x 37.9 cm.

(Ulster Museum). This intense self-portrait, depicting Conor as Byronic hero, shows him wearing his

traditional black floppy bow tie.

3. William CONOR: The Painter's Mother, c.1919. Oil on

canvas, 74 x 60.5 cm. (Ulster Museum). In this, one of Conor's most successful portraits, the sitter's personality

and expression are sensitively captured.

(Opposite) 1. William CONOR: The Launch. 1922. Oil on canvas, 106 x 80 cm. (sight) (Ulster Folk and

Transport Museum). In composing the painting in this

manner, Conor cleverly draws the spectator into the scene of the launch.

Wilson suggests in her book on Conor.4

In 1904, he began an apprenticeship as a lithographer and poster designer

with the Belfast firm of David Allen and

Sons but left around 1910, not wishing to pursue a career in this line. However,

although he turned his back on lithogra

phy, he was to make good use of the

experience, for the origins of his distinc

tive drawing technique of wax crayons

scraped with a razor blade stemmed

from these days. Undecided as to his next move, he then went travelling,

firstly to the Blasket Islands in county

Kerry, followed by Dublin and, there

after, to Paris for about six months in

1912. Whilst there, he studied the

Dutch and Italian Old Masters in the

city's museums and also explored mod

ern trends in art, working for a time in

the studio of the Cubist Andre Lhote, who welcomed students for a small fee.

Nevertheless, despite such forays, his

artistic inclinations remained firmly

directed towards the representational.

On his return to Belfast, he became

involved yet again with the Belfast Art

Society - he had been elected a member

in 1909 - and in 1913 became a com

mittee member. All the while, he con

tinued to draw people going about their

daily lives in the streets and industries,

generally sketching in crayon in a spon

taneous Impressionist style. These genre

scenes, though praised in the local press,

were slow to sell, possibly because

Belfast's wealthier inhabitants were

loathe to hang scenes of working-class

life on their drawing room walls. Judith Wilson recounts how R V Williams, a

friend of Conor, advised a wealthy ama

teur to purchase one of Conor's draw

ings of a mill worker, to which the man

replied, 'My wife doesn't like them

things. She worked in a mill herself, and

the neighbours might say yon was a por

trait of her, when she was young.'5

During the First World War, Conor

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Scenes of Ulster Life: The Paintings and Drawings of William Conor

4. William CONOR: Off: The Ulster Division. 1915. Charcoal, chalk on paper, 55 x

37.3 cm. (Ulster Museum). There is a particular poignancy to these images of excited troops, given the carnage they were to face at the Somme.

worked as a war artist, visiting munition works and army camps,

recording the lives of the troops of the Ulster Division (Figs 4 and 5). His images of the men's happy, smiling faces have a spe

cial poignancy, given our knowledge of the carnage to come at

the Somme and other battles. A number of these drawings made at the various Ulster Division training camps were exhib

ited at Belfast City Hall in Christmas week 1916 and were auc

tioned in aid of the Ulster Volunteer Force hospitals. Also

amongst the works on display were portraits of well-known

political figures such as Sir Edward Carson and James Craig, later 1st Viscount Craigavon.

Although this war work brought Conor greater recognition,

he found it difficult to survive financially in Belfast and in early 1921, went to London, possibly hoping to improve his circum

stances. For reasons unknown -

homesickness perhaps -

he stayed

for only three or four months. Though the visit was short, it was

fruitful, for he made contact with a

number of well-known artists and

formed friendships with Augustus John and Sir John and Lady Lavery. Lavery's

5. William CONOR: Bugler, Ulster Division, c.1933. Charcoal, chalk on paper, 55 x 38.9 cm. (Ulster Museum). Conor's skill as a sketcher is evident in this

sensitive study.

support was to prove particularly useful when Conor returned

home, for he recommended that Conor be commissioned to

paint the opening of the first Northern Ireland parliament, an

event which took place on 22 June 1921. The picture, the most

important of Conor's career by that point, hangs in Parliament

Buildings, Stormont.

During the inter-war years, Conor became increasingly well

known in Belfast, Dublin, and London through the exhibitions

of the Belfast Art Society and its successor, the Ulster Academy of Arts; also those of the Royal Hibernian Academy and Royal

Academy. He also ventured further afield, to America during

1926-27, where he held a one-man show in New York and took

part in a group exhibition of works on paper at the Brooklyn

Museum. Most of the paintings he showed in New York were on

the theme of 'Irish Life' -

the everyday scenes of Ulster working

class culture which by then had become his speciality. One of

his best-known examples of the genre is

The Jaunting Car (Fig 13), perhaps the

archetypal image of a Belfast backstreet

during the 'thirties. Whilst not entirely

(Opposite) 6. William CONOR: The Studio Dance. Oil on canvas, 127 x 102 cm. (Ulster Folk and

Transport Museum). The young man playing the melodeon is Conor himself.

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7. William CONOR: Shipyard Workers Crossing Queen's Bridge (Men of the Home Front), c.1940. Crayon on paper, 34.5 x 46.8 cm. (Ulster Museum) This is executed in Conor's distinctive drawing technique of wax crayons

scraped with a razor blade, a style he perfected during the 1930s.

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8. William CONOR: Co//ecting Scrap Metal. Crayon on paper, 34.7 x 44.5 cm.

(sight) (Ulster Museum). The collecting of scrap metal such as gates, fences

and household items was an important contribution to the war effort on the Home Front.

9. William CONOR: Evacuation of Children, Great Northern Railway Station,

Belfast, c.1941. Pencil, crayon on paper, 34.5 x 46 cm. (Ulster Museum). This drawing of a crowded scene at a railway station, composed with figures

cut off mid-length in the foreground, has the immediacy of a photograph. Note how the children seem excited and happy, with the exception of the

small child in the right-hand corner.

successful in compositional terms - the figures in the foreground

and the street seem to be on entirely different planes -

the pic

ture's strength lies in its emotional appeal.

The Second World War saw Conor engaged yet again as a

war artist, recording the training of troops and scenes of the

Home Front. The latter subject is particularly well catered for in

the holdings of the Ulster Museum, with works such as Shipyard Workers Crossing Queens Bridge (Men of the Home Front),

Collecting Scrap Metal and Evacuation of Children, Great Northern

Railway Station, Belfast (Figs 7-9). A special exhibition of these

wartime images, including a number commissioned by the

Ministry of Information, was one of the events of Belfast's War

Weapons Week in December 1940. The following August, an

exhibition of his scenes of the Blitz on Belfast - 'Air Raid

Memories' - was held in one of the major stores in town.

Though he undoubtedly welcomed the money he received from

the sale of these wartime work, he hated the war years and

seemed to want to erase them from his memory, according to a

friend's recollections. Oddly, despite this discomfiture, the par

ticipants in many of these scenes radiate good humour; there is

no misery, no tears.

With the 1950s came honours and official recognition. In

1952, he received an OBE (Order of the British Empire) and in

1957, an honorary Master of Arts degree from Queen's

University, in appreciation of his services to art in Northern

Ireland. In this latter year, he also became president of the Royal

Ulster Academy (as the Ulster Academy of Arts had styled itself

since 1950), a position he held until 1964. He continued to

exhibit in Belfast and Dublin until 1967 and died in his native

city on 5 February 1968.

Of his pictures in the Museums and Galleries of Northern

Ireland (MAGNI), there are sixty-four in the Art department of

the Ulster Museum, eleven in the museum's History department

and five in Armagh County Museum, with subjects embracing

military and Home Front scenes, images of working-class life,

townscapes, portraits, and a solitary flower painting. However,

the largest collection of his work -

almost 1,200 pieces - is to be

found in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.6 Only recently

fully catalogued, details are published for the first time in

MAGNI's new concise catalogue of its fine art holdings.7 Most

of the items are figure studies in pencil, many containing images

on both recto and verso. In addition to the human form, there

are a number of other subjects, also in pencil: animal studies,

views of David Allen's workroom, where the young Conor learnt

the trade of lithographer, images from Conor's home life, scenes

of elections, street scenes, and glimpses of men and women at

work. In their depiction of these various themes, the drawings

and studies are of considerable interest both to the art historian

and social historian; indeed, a booklet on their social historical

content will be published shortly.8 There are also several finished

works in oil and crayon, showing people at work and at play,

such as The Launch, The Hurley Players, Lamp-post Swinging and

The Studio Dance (Figs 1, 11, 12, & 6); also political events like

The Twelfth (Fig 10). In all, the collection is a fascinating record

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10. William CONOR: The Twelfth. 1918. Oil on canvas, 71.2 x 91.2 cm. (Ulster Folk and Transport Museum). This image of the Twelfth of July procession in Wellington Place, Belfast is executed in the sketchy manner of Conor's drawings, using very broad brushstrokes. King Billy on his white charger can be seen on the banner to the left.

11. William CONOR: The Hurley Players. 1948. Crayon on paper, 50.8 x 61 cm.

(sight) (Ulster Folk and Transport Museum). Conor saw this particular match in

Falls Park in Belfast.

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12. William CONOR: Lamp-post Swinging. 1957. Crayon on paper, 37 x 49 cm.

(Ulster Folk and Transport Museum). Street games like this were a popular pastime in working-class areas of Belfast until the 1950s.

151

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13. William CONOR: The Jaunting Car. c.1933. Oil on canvas, 70.9 x 90.9 cm.

(Ulster Museum). Figure compositions were amongst Conor's most popular works.

Jaunting cars were common in Belfast during the 'twenties and 'thirties.

of a life dedicated to art.

As for Conor's preferred subject-matter, his friend, the poet

John Hewitt claimed that it irked him to be categorised as the

painter of working-class life.9 Though he obviously felt a deep affection for the subject

- as his comments at the beginning of

this article indicate -

he wished to be viewed in a more rounded

way and preferred the description 'portraitist, landscapist and

genre painter'. Nevertheless, whilst gifted at portraiture, as the

painting of his mother shows (Fig 3), he was never a leading practitioner: that position, in Belfast, was held by Frank

McKelvey and in Dublin, by such as Dermod O'Brien, Sean O'Sullivan, Sarah Purser, and Hilda Roberts. Furthermore,

as S B Kennedy points out in Irish Art and Modernism, his por traits were often marred by a distracting, overly vigorous brush

work.10 One of his most successful works is his portrait of Dr

Douglas Hyde (University College, Dublin), in which the han

dling of paint is much more restrained than usual and where he

uses the vibrant pinks of the sitter's academic gown to add vital

ity to the image.11

With landscape, his position was also secondary as James

Humbert Craig and Frank McKelvey dominated the genre in

Belfast. Conor made few inroads into this particular field because of the competition. Nonetheless, he could produce some fine work on occasion. Probably the most notable example

is The City Hall under Snow (Fig 14), where the limited range of cool colours of whites and greys evokes the atmosphere of a win

ter's day and where the scene is depicted concisely and without

14. William CONOR: The City Hall under Snow. c. 1920s. Oil on canvas on board, 42.9 x 53.3 cm. (Ulster Museum). In this painting, the cool colours of whites and

greys emphasise the atmosphere of a snow-laden winter's day.

distracting detail. The mood of silence in the picture is almost

poetic. However, his later oils, several of which were of Lagan

scenes, tend to have a flat two-dimensional effect and are not

entirely successful.12

As regards Conor's position in the local art world, his images

of the working classes made him unique amongst artists in the

North; indeed, few painters in the whole of Ireland pursued such

genre themes, with the exception of Jack B Yeats and Paul

Henry, the latter with his peasant subjects. Paul Henry's Achill

paintings were first exhibited in Belfast in 1911.13 John Hewitt, in Judith Wilson's book, speculates that Conor may have seen

Henry's pictures around this time and that this may have awak

ened in him the possibilities of exploring further the Northern 'urban peasant' who featured so strongly in his own

sketchbooks.14 Whatever the case - and probably to Conor's dis

may -

his reputation now rests upon his images of working-class

life in Belfast during the first half of the 20th century. Between 1944 and 1959 Conor used a single-storey building on

the Stranmillis Road, opposite the Ulster Museum gates, as his stu

dio. It is now a restaurant known as Conor, its fagade bearing as a

sign a facsimile of Conor's painting signature writ large. A modest

man by all accounts, Conor would surely have found this amusing.

ElLEEN Black, a Curator of Fine Art in the Ulster Museum, has produced a

number of museum catalogues and edited the recently-revised concise catalogue, Drawings, Paintings and Sculptures: The Catalogue of the Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland, reviewed in this issue.

1 J C Wilson, Conor 1881-1968: The Life and

Work of an Ulster Artist (Belfast 1981). This remains the major study of Conor. Much of

the biographical information is taken from this source.

2 M Anglesea, William Conor: The People's Painter (Belfast 1999). Part of the text of this

booklet was used on the W and G Baird calen dar for 1999, the subject of which was Conor.

3 S B Kennedy, Paul Henry (New Haven and

London 2000), pp.13-14. 4 J Wilson (as note 1), p.3. 5 J Wilson (as note 1), p. 12.

6 The exact figure is 1,193 items.

7 E Black (ed), Drawings, Paintings and

Sculptures: The Catalogue, Museums and

Galleries of Northern Ireland (2000). 8 J Bell, Conor: Drawing from Life (forthcoming).

9 J Wilson (as note l),p.l24. 10 S B Kennedy, Irish Art and Modernism

1880-1950 (Belfast 1991), p.175. 11 S B Kennedy (as note 10), cat no 101, p.315. 12 J Wilson (as note l),p.l25. 13 S B Kennedy (as note 3), pp.44-48. 14 J Wilson (as note l),p.l26.

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Scenes of Ulster Life: The Paintings and Drawings of William Conor

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