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Lot description
Graphite on laid paper, depicting three figures together, signed l.r.; 24" x 19" (sight), 32" x 25" (framed). William Conor was an Irish figurative painter remembered for his paintings of working-class life in Ulster, the northernmost province of Ireland. Over the course of his career, he received numerous prestigious commissions, including one for the opening of the Northern Ireland Parliament, as well as a mural, Ulster Past And Present, for the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery. Today, his best known works are the crayon and watercolor studies of ordinary people and scenes from daily life. "My aim has been to seek for beauty in those places where it is not often sought, in crowded thoroughfares, in the factory and in the shipyard," the artist said of his work. Born in Belfast, Ireland on May 9, 1881 he studied at the Belfast Government School of Art before joining the lithography company David Allen and Sons, where he apprenticed as a poster designer. During World War I, he was enlisted by the British government as a war artist to document in drawings, the soldiers and munitions workers on the front lines. In 1920, Conor moved to London where he befriended the artists John Lavery and Augustus Edwin John. He was the first Irish artist to gain membership to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and in 1952 was awarded the Order of the British Empire. Conor died in Belfast, Ireland on February 5, 1968.