Kate O'Connor Paintings & Artwork for Sale | Kate O'Connor Art Value Price Guide

Oct. 24, 2023
§ KATE O'CONNOR (1876-1968) Fireside c.1910-12 oil on canvas 32 x 39.5cm
Est: $9,000 - $12,000
§ KATE O'CONNOR (1876-1968) Fireside c.1910-12 oil on canvas signed lower left: KLO'C artist's name, title and date inscribed on stretcher bar verso 32 x 39.5cm PROVENANCE: Private collection, Hobart Menzies, Sydney, 24 March 2011, lot 88 Private collection, Melbourne
Leonard Joel
Nov. 23, 2021
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE) O'CONNOR - ENSEMBLE NICE, FRANCE - Oil on board
Est: $28,000 - $38,000
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE) O'CONNOR (1876-1968) ENSEMBLE NICE, FRANCE Signed lower right, titled verso Oil on board 40 x 34cm $28,000/38,000
GFL Fine Art
Nov. 23, 2021
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE) O'CONNOR - ITALIAN MODEL PORTRAIT IN THE LUXEMBURG GARDENS c.1910-1914 - Oil on card
Est: $16,000 - $22,000
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE) O'CONNOR (1876-1968) ITALIAN MODEL PORTRAIT IN THE LUXEMBURG GARDENS c.1910-1914 Signed lower right Oil on card 55 x 42cm $16,000/22,000
GFL Fine Art
Nov. 27, 2019
KATE O'CONNOR, (1876 – 1968, New Zealand/Australian), ARTIST AND EASEL, LUXEMBOURG GARDENS, c.1910 – 14, oil on board
Est: $20,000 - $30,000
KATE O'CONNOR (1876 – 1968, New Zealand/Australian) ARTIST AND EASEL, LUXEMBOURG GARDENS, c.1910 – 14 oil on board SIGNED: signed with initials lower right: KL O’C signed verso: KL O’Connor signed on partial label verso: … O’Connor DIMENSIONS: 44.5 x 54.5 cm PROVENANCE: Osborne Art Gallery, Adelaide Private collection Christie’s, Melbourne (as ‘Portrait of the artist at her easel’) Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in November 1995 EXHIBITED: 51e Salon de l’Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs, Paris, February 1935 (label attached verso) Exhibition of Paintings by Kathleen O’Connor, Osborne Art Gallery, Adelaide, 28 April – 11 May 1965, cat. 18 (as ‘Artist Sketching, Luxemburg [sic.] Gardens’) ESSAY: ‘Kathleen O’Connor fixes the present almost at the moment of it becoming the past: movement is arrested, as if, by this trick, time might be stopped … The Luxembourg paintings … have a haunting, Proustian quality. They are ‘remembrances of things past’. Even as they were being painted in their own distant world, these paintings were essentially ‘recollections’; emotion caught in instants of tranquility and of insight’.1 Within the extended series of images that Kate O’Connor painted in the Luxembourg Gardens are occasional ‘snapshots’ of fellow artists engaged in similar endeavours, such as Two figures, Luxembourg Gardens, c.1910 – 14 (University of Western Australia, Perth). There is no implied commentary in these works; rather, they represent a simple record of focused observation, indicating that to her at least, artists formed part of the necessary and everyday fabric of life, a view in direct opposition to her former experience within the stifling etiquette of Perth society. Given that it is painted on board, Artist and Easel, Luxembourg Gardens, would likely have been part of O’Connor’s second sequence of Gardens paintings created immediately after World War One and, through the inclusion of the subject’s own attempts at the easel, provides a distinctive contrast with many of its painterly companions. For the greater part, O’Connor utilised muted tones of beige, caramel and stone, with only occasional, though relatively subdued, flashes of colour. In Artist and easel, Luxembourg Gardens, however, the depicted artist has looked out – not inwards like O’Connor – and the burst of blue sky and verdant greens punctuate the picture plane. It also highlights that O’Connor’s choice of otherwise muted tones was a deliberate tactic, and through this, an inevitable sense of melancholy and wistfulness permeates these views. 1. Hutchings, P. A. E., and Lewis, J., Kathleen O’Connor: artist in exile, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Western Australia, 1987, pp. 207, 211 ANDREW GAYNOR
Deutscher and Hackett
Nov. 27, 2019
KATE O'CONNOR, (1876 – 1968, New Zealand/Australian), IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS, c.1913 , oil on card
Est: $15,000 - $20,000
KATE O'CONNOR (1876 – 1968, New Zealand/Australian) IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS, c.1913 oil on card SIGNED: signed with initials lower right: K L O’C inscribed verso: O’Connor / O’Connor / 1953 / …24… / Mrs J Lorking (?) / Lis…. bears inscription on old label verso: / Mrs Oliver Williams / 11 Mosman Terrace / Mosman Park / 35625 bears inscription on old label verso: … / Mentone DIMENSIONS: 38.0 x 46.0 cm PROVENANCE: Private collection, Perth Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in December 1988 EXHIBITED: Australian Art: 1790s – 1970s, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne, 24 November – 9 December 1988, cat. 27 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) RELATED WORK: Ladies, Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, oil on board, 48.3 x 63.5 cm, Janet Holmes à Court Collection, Perth, illus. in Harris, M., ‘Kate O’Connor’, Art and Australia, Ure Smith, Sydney, vol. 3, no. 4, March 1966, p. 268 In the Luxembourg Gardens, oil on board, 68.7 x 81.0 cm, Royal Perth Hospital Art Collection, Perth ESSAY: ‘They took two straw-bottomed chairs and sat near the octagonal water which completes with its fountain of Cupids the enchanting artificiality of the Luxembourg. The sun shone more kindly now, and the trees which framed the scene were golden and lovely. A balustrade of stone gracefully enclosed the space, and the flowers, freshly bedded, were very gay … The place was grey and solid. Nurses, some in the white caps of their native province, others with satin streamers of the nounou [nannies], marched sedately two by two, wheeling perambulators and talking’.1 ‘(My paintings) were just impressions of people I saw sitting about in the Gardens … sketches of people, nursemaids and babies and all those sorts … I just did them at one sitting’.2 In a 1947 interview with Kathleen O’Connor, the artist reflected that in her early Luxembourg Gardens paintings, she had ‘been more concerned with expression of character and pattern rather than exact representation of human form’.3 She proudly claimed that ‘Paris was my always my objective’,4 but once there, it was inevitable that she felt an acute loneliness. Indeed, her choice of muted colours has been interpreted as a reflection of her own sense of being an outsider, one whose lack of an immediate circle of family and friends left her with little choice but to roam Paris in search of subjects she could anonymously paint. Fortuitously, she found in the Luxembourg Gardens ‘quiet avenues and densely shaded areas … a perfect working environment for artists seeking to make quick sketches of the passing nursemaids, students and elegant promenaders’.5 In the Luxembourg Gardens, c.1913, captures five of the Gardens’ elegantly hatted visitors, each seated on the distinctive slatted, folding chairs provided gratis. Amidst the Whistlerian browns and greys, deft flashes of pink and blue animate the feathers in the ladies’ hats, and through these flourishes, link this work to companion paintings such as The Pink Nurse, c.1910 (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra), and (Seated figure in purple/blue gown and hat), c.1910 – 14 (private collection, Perth),6 both of which feature similar contrasts of unexpected colour. Paintings from these years are amongst the most sought-after of Kathleen O’Connor’s oeuvre with significant examples residing in the collections of Wesfarmers, Janet Holmes à Court, and the State galleries of New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania. 1. W. Somerset Maugham, The Magician, Heinemann, London, first published 1908, quoted from 1974 edition, p. 2, cited in Gooding, J., Chasing Shadows: the art of Kathleen O’Connor, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1996, p. 23 2. Kathleen O’Connor, interview with Hazel de Berg, 28 May 1965, cited in Taylor, E., Australian Impressionists in France, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2013, p. 113 3. Kathleen O’Connor, quoted in ‘A Painter of the Modern School’, MiLady (magazine), Perth, January 1949, p. 67 4. Gooding, J., op. cit., p. 21 5. ibid. 6. The reverse of (Seated figure in purple gown and hat) also features a view of houses in Bruge. ANDREW GAYNOR
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 19, 2018
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE) O'CONNOR - PORTRAIT - Oil on board
Est: $7,000 - $9,000
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE) O'CONNOR (1876-1968) PORTRAIT Signed lower left Oil on board 38 x 30cm $7,000/9,000
GFL Fine Art
May. 29, 2018
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE) O'CONNOR - PORTRAIT - Oil on board
Est: $8,000 - $12,000
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE) O'CONNOR (1876-1968) PORTRAIT Signed lower left Oil on board 38 x 30cm $8,000/12,000
GFL Fine Art
Nov. 22, 2016
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE) O'CONNOR - PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS HODGKINS - Watercolour
Est: $12,000 - $18,000
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE) O'CONNOR (1876-1968) PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS HODGKINS Signed lower right Watercolour 34.5 x 24cm $12,000/18,000
GFL Fine Art
May. 04, 2016
KATE O'CONNOR, (1876 - 1968, New Zealand/Australian), STILL LIFE WITH MASKS, oil on canvas
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
KATE O'CONNOR, (1876 - 1968, New Zealand/Australian), STILL LIFE WITH MASKS, oil on canvas SIGNED: signed lower right: - L OConnor painted on reverse: First Communion DIMENSIONS: 73.0 - 92.0 cm PROVENANCE: Ailsa Osborne Gallery, Adelaide Mrs Sweetenham, Adelaide, acquired from the above c.1965 Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 12 April 1989, lot 1430 (as Mardi Gras - still life with theatre masks; On reverse: Portrait of - Lady in White) Bill Luke, Melbourne Arthur Spartalis Fine Art, Perth, 1995 Private collection, Perth EXHIBITED: Kathleen OConnor, Ailsa Osborne Gallery, Adelaide, 1965 Kathleen OConnor, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, - July - 29 September 1996 (label attached verso) RELATED WORK: The Sound of Two Balls Dropping, 1998, aluminium on canvas, Wesfarmers Collection, Perth
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 26, 2015
KATE O'CONNOR, (1876 - 1968, New Zealand/Australian), LUXEMBOURG GARDENS, PARIS, GIRL SKETCHING, 1917–23, oil on board
Est: $15,000 - $20,000
KATE O'CONNOR, (1876 - 1968, New Zealand/Australian), LUXEMBOURG GARDENS, PARIS, GIRL SKETCHING, 1917–23, oil on board SIGNED: signed with initials lower left: KOC signed (twice) verso: OConnor signed and inscribed on artist’s label verso: Luxemberg [sic] Gardens / Paris / Girl sketching / KLOConnor DIMENSIONS: 42.5 x 59.5 cm LITERATURE: Harris, M., ‘Kate O’Connor’, Art and Australia, vol. 3, no. 4, March 1966, p. 271 (illus.) PROVENANCE: Mervyn Horton, Sydney (label attached verso) Private collection, Perth Sotheby’s, Sydney, 15 August 2000, lot 68 Private collection, Perth
Deutscher and Hackett
Apr. 30, 2014
KATE O'CONNOR 1876 - 1968, New Zealand/Australian, LUXEMBOURG GARDENS, PARIS, GIRL SKETCHING, c1917-23, oil on board
Est: $30,000 - $40,000
KATE O'CONNOR 1876 - 1968, New Zealand/Australian, LUXEMBOURG GARDENS, PARIS, GIRL SKETCHING, c1917-23, oil on board SIGNED: signed with initials lower left: KOC signed (twice) verso: Oconnor signed and inscribed on artist's label verso: Luxemberg [sic] Gardens / Paris / Girl sketching / KLOConnor DIMENSIONS: 42.5 x 59.5 cm LITERATURE: Harris, M., 'Kate O'Connor', Art and Australia, vol. 3, no. 4, March 1966, p. 271 (illus.) PROVENANCE: Mervyn Horton, Sydney (label attached verso) Private collection, Perth Sotheby's, Sydney, 15 August 2000, lot 68 Private collection, Perth ESSAY: Kate O'Connor's paintings captivate through their superb handling of colour and informal mastery, a moment captured as a work of art. The Luxembourg Gardens in Paris inspired many, all handled with an ease that is redolent of their time and place - of ladies relaxing, nurses of Brittany with children in their care, and the delightful Woman in a Hat Sketching - Luxembourg Gardens, once in the collection of the artist Robert Campbell, one time director of the Art Gallery of South Australia.1 The affinity between this work and our Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, Girl Sketching goes beyond the thematic in harmony of painterly pleasure and engaging mood. Yet, imbued as they are with relaxation, each is enlivened by the strokes of the brush, full of movement and interchange - silently talkative. They are not conversation pieces in the traditional sense, rather conversations shared with the viewer through their liveliness and spontaneity, frequent back views balancing intimacy with anonymity. The outstanding quality of our painting is acknowledged by its provenance, once being in the collection of the leading Sydney connoisseur, Mervyn Horton, founder-editor of Art and Australia, refined of taste and perception. Many an Australian artist was attracted to the Luxembourg Gardens during the first two decades of the twentieth century - Bessie Davidson, Hilda Rix Nicholas, Marie Tuck, and of course Emanuel Phillips Fox, his English wife Ethel Carrick Fox, and Rupert Bunny. Bunny possibly introduced O'Connor to the gardens, for it was here that he found inspiration to do a series of paintings of the spring of 1909, the same year O'Connor was briefly his pupil. O'Connor's early Luxembourg Gardens paintings date from 1910-14.2 Two, Esquisse (Jardin du Luxembourg) and Equisse were exhibited in the 1913 Salon d'Automne, achieving the distinction of being favourably reviewed.3 Like Carrick towards the end of the Great War, O'Connor returned to the gardens in 1917, when her beautifully muted palette showed the further enriching influence of Edouard Vuillard, who O'Connor had met at that time. Writing years later, Max Harris referred to 'the singing chromatic scales she finds on her palette'.4 These hues, that lead to dissolution of form and flat patterning, conversely develop form through colour. One welcomes the new interest in paint surfaces, figures subtle in definition disappearing and appearing, inviting enjoyment of the painting's figurative and abstract qualities as one. The twenties were one of O'Connor's most creative periods, exhibiting Luxembourg Gardens scenes, portraits, and still lifes at the Paris Société des Artistes Indepéndants and the Salon d'Automne. Although O'Connor established a French reputation, her achievements were never fully realized in Australia. Her free-spirited style, derived from Irish-Celtic complexity and Australian directness, with an overlay of European sensibility, deserves more. 1. See Harris, M., 'Kate O'Connor', Art and Australia, vol. 3, no. 4, March 1966, p. 267 (illus.) 2. For examples, see Gooding, J., Chasing Shadows: The Art of Kathleen O'Connor, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1996, pl. 60-65 3. Habert, M., Beaux Arts, Paris, 'De Mlle O'Connor, Le Blanc et les Dos, Les Dos et les Chaises, pochades bien assises ...' (Miss O'Connor, The Bench and the Backs, The Backs and the Chairs, well set out pochades ...). Quoted in Hutchings, P. AE., and Lewis, J., Kathleen O'Connor: Artist in Exile, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Perth, 1987, pp. 169-170 4. Harris, op. cit., p. 268 DAVID THOMAS
Deutscher and Hackett
Dec. 04, 2012
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE), O'CONNOR (1876-1968),
Est: $4,000 - $6,000
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE), O'CONNOR (1876-1968), BRETON GIRL, Signed lower right, Oil on card
GFL Fine Art
Nov. 22, 2011
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE) O'CONNOR (1876-1968) STILL LIFE POPPIES
Est: $12,000 - $18,000
KATHLEEN LETITIA (KATE) O'CONNOR (1876-1968) STILL LIFE POPPIES Signed lower left Watercolour 50 x 42cm
GFL Fine Art