In conjunction with Master Drawings New York, we will also be exhibiting 26 oil sketches of the East River by Angela Conner (b. 1935) at:

 
Mark Murray Fine Art
116 E 62nd St
New York, NY 10065
By appointment only: +1 (212) 585-2380
 
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  • In the 1970s, when she was in her 40s, Angela Conner painted a series of oil studies of the view...
    In the 1970s, when she was in her 40s, Angela Conner painted a series of oil studies of the view out over the East River in New York from the windows of unoccupied offices in the United Nations building on Manhattan where her stepfather worked, not far from where Georgia O’Keeffe had painted similar views from the Shelton Hotel fifty years before. Conner painted in the first light of the morning, before the UN office workers arrived for the day, to catch the subtle hues of sunrise over the expansive view to the East. These paintings are like tone poems, and are often in a ‘letterbox' format, the better to catch the breadth of the sunrise. Many have the time they were painted written on the back, all between 5:45 and 7:30 am. She seems to have painted them quite quickly (half an hour apart at the most). In them you can see the Queensborough Bridge, or the tip of Roosevelt Island with its little reef, or the tiny lump of U Thant (formerly Belmont) Island, and you can see past the old docks on the Queens shoreline, (now part of Gantry Plaza State Park), past the giant gantries and Long Island Power Station with it’s distinctive four smoke stacks, now gone, over Hunter’s Point, to Jackson Heights and on down the length of Long Island. Boats push up and down the river, leaving rippled wakes in the water. Several of her paintings like this were bought by the then Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and are hanging at Chatsworth.
  • Conner was born in London and was initially a self-taught painter, but became a sculptor and was ‘apprenticed' to Barbara...
    Conner was born in London and was initially a self-taught painter, but became a sculptor and was ‘apprenticed' to Barbara Hepworth. Conner was married to the documentary film-maker and photographer John Bulmer. Her sister was the writer and critic Penelope Gilliatt, third wife of the playwright John Osborne. Conner’s portrait subjects included Sir John Betjeman, Sir Noël Coward, Lucian Freud, Charles de Gaulle, Lord Goodman, Harold Macmillan, HM The Queen, Sir John Tavener, Lord Rothschild, Lord Sainsbury, The Duke of Devonshire, and HRH The Prince of Wales. Conner claimed that she was “basically a landscape sculptor using natural forces such as wind, water, gravity, sun and shadow.” These included the 20-tonne Irish Wave, 129 feet high, of stainless steel and carbon fibre. At the time of its construction it was believed to be the world's highest mobile, and is located in Parkwest business park, Dublin, Ireland. Conner's solo exhibitions including Hirschl Fine Art, London 2001, with others at Browse & Darby, Gimpel Fils, Pittsburgh Museum of Modern Art in America and elsewhere. She won a number of competitions and awards and was a fellow of the RBS. The Arts Council, National Portrait Gallery, Jewish Museum in New York and many other notable public and private collections hold examples.