William Conor RUA RHA (1886-1968) The Bank Holiday Excursio...
William Conor RUA RHA (1886-1968) The Bank Holiday Excursion Oil on canvas 76 x 63cm (30 x 24¾") Signed Provenance: Collection of Reeta and Frank Hughes, Warrenpoint, thence by descent.
William Conor was born in Belfast to a Protestant family in the year 1881. He was the son of a sheet metal worker and gas fitter and this practical working-class background set the tone for Conor's portraits of Belfast's social history. Indeed, the artist's oeuvre, with the benefit of some year's hindsight, functions as quite a thorough record of working class society and typically conjure a sense of conviviality and community through expressions of laughter and conversation. Judith C. Wilson quotes from the artist in her biography ''Being a Belfast man myself it has been my ambition to reveal the Spiritual Character of its people in all its vigour, in all its senses of life, in all its variety, in all its passion, humanity and humour''.1
Conor's artistic talents appeared quite early and he was accepted to the Belfast Government School of Art by recommendation where he studied alongside Paul Henry RHA (1877-1958). Conor graduated with prizes in life drawing and anatomy and from 1904 spent the ensuing six years working as a lithographer and poster designer for the firm of David Allen & Sons, working primarily in black and white. He eventually left this field, but his preferred medium of wax crayons was no doubt cultivated here and the resulting patinaed hazy effect we see in his scenes of Belfast feel as ordinary and ephemeral as snapshots of history fixed on tin-plate. Equally, his pictures retain a somewhat stylised outline of blacks and browns over which the brighter colours of textiles and appear to be later applied, no doubt an evolution of his earlier lithography career. The artist went on to work unofficially as a war artist during the first world war and later was given formal commissions to do the same during the Second World War by the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC).
The Bank Holiday Excursion depicts a scene likely on the cusp of the interwar period and the early years of the Second World War. Conor depicted railway scenes throughout his career as a war artist and genre painter, many of which now reside in The Ulster Museum and The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. In contrast to the epic scenes of heroism and tragedy depicted by Lavery and Orpen, Conor acknowledges the quiet nobility of the working class and the small domestic experiences of Belfast's men, women and children. The city's linen industry for example employed many women into the war effort, as did the foundries who now required girls for munitions fabrication. The Bank Holiday Excursion here presented depicts a small motley group of women and children awaiting the arrival of a train from an unspecified location to a station, also unspecified. We observe the young girl with cotton stockings, tightly gripping a small suitcase, her brows knitted and mouth pursed in an anxious expression. The adult women who surround her remain solitary except one who acknowledges a tightly swaddled baby with a smile. A second young girl is captured with her clenched hand across her mouth stifling a laugh, sob or yawn, further adding to the tension of the scene which is simultaneously candid and cryptic. The suspense of the oncoming train is heralded by a plume of steam faintly visible in the right hand side of the frame. For some this may be a routine appointment, for others a bank holiday excursion and for the young girl in the cotton stockings this might well be a more sombre occasion. It recalls a well-intentioned but nonetheless failed evacuation of a proportion of Belfast's 70,000 schoolchildren in 1939 which resulted in the anticlimactic registration of a mere 1,500 for the planned date of 7th July 1940, many of whom drifted quietly back to the city after a few weeks to some embarrassment on the part of the city officials. The success of Conor's painting lies in the tension which pervades the scene and forces to viewer to acknowledge the Who, What, Where and Why of this picture, particularly within the cultural context in which this was painted.
Stephanie Brennan, October 2026
1 Wilson, Judith, C. 'William Conor, 1881-1968: The Life and Work of an Ulster Artist'. Printed by Blackstaff Press, 1981
William Conor RUA RHA (1886-1968) The Bank Holiday Excursion Oil on canvas 76 x 63cm (30 x 24¾") Signed Provenance: Collection of Reeta and Frank Hughes, Warrenpoint, thence by descent.
William Conor was born in Belfast to a Protestant family in the year 1881. He was the son of a sheet metal worker and gas fitter and this practical working-class background set the tone for Conor's portraits of Belfast's social history. Indeed, the artist's oeuvre, with the benefit of some year's hindsight, functions as quite a thorough record of working class society and typically conjure a sense of conviviality and community through expressions of laughter and conversation. Judith C. Wilson quotes from the artist in her biography ''Being a Belfast man myself it has been my ambition to reveal the Spiritual Character of its people in all its vigour, in all its senses of life, in all its variety, in all its passion, humanity and humour''.1
Conor's artistic talents appeared quite early and he was accepted to the Belfast Government School of Art by recommendation where he studied alongside Paul Henry RHA (1877-1958). Conor graduated with prizes in life drawing and anatomy and from 1904 spent the ensuing six years working as a lithographer and poster designer for the firm of David Allen & Sons, working primarily in black and white. He eventually left this field, but his preferred medium of wax crayons was no doubt cultivated here and the resulting patinaed hazy effect we see in his scenes of Belfast feel as ordinary and ephemeral as snapshots of history fixed on tin-plate. Equally, his pictures retain a somewhat stylised outline of blacks and browns over which the brighter colours of textiles and appear to be later applied, no doubt an evolution of his earlier lithography career. The artist went on to work unofficially as a war artist during the first world war and later was given formal commissions to do the same during the Second World War by the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC).
The Bank Holiday Excursion depicts a scene likely on the cusp of the interwar period and the early years of the Second World War. Conor depicted railway scenes throughout his career as a war artist and genre painter, many of which now reside in The Ulster Museum and The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. In contrast to the epic scenes of heroism and tragedy depicted by Lavery and Orpen, Conor acknowledges the quiet nobility of the working class and the small domestic experiences of Belfast's men, women and children. The city's linen industry for example employed many women into the war effort, as did the foundries who now required girls for munitions fabrication. The Bank Holiday Excursion here presented depicts a small motley group of women and children awaiting the arrival of a train from an unspecified location to a station, also unspecified. We observe the young girl with cotton stockings, tightly gripping a small suitcase, her brows knitted and mouth pursed in an anxious expression. The adult women who surround her remain solitary except one who acknowledges a tightly swaddled baby with a smile. A second young girl is captured with her clenched hand across her mouth stifling a laugh, sob or yawn, further adding to the tension of the scene which is simultaneously candid and cryptic. The suspense of the oncoming train is heralded by a plume of steam faintly visible in the right hand side of the frame. For some this may be a routine appointment, for others a bank holiday excursion and for the young girl in the cotton stockings this might well be a more sombre occasion. It recalls a well-intentioned but nonetheless failed evacuation of a proportion of Belfast's 70,000 schoolchildren in 1939 which resulted in the anticlimactic registration of a mere 1,500 for the planned date of 7th July 1940, many of whom drifted quietly back to the city after a few weeks to some embarrassment on the part of the city officials. The success of Conor's painting lies in the tension which pervades the scene and forces to viewer to acknowledge the Who, What, Where and Why of this picture, particularly within the cultural context in which this was painted.
Stephanie Brennan, October 2026
1 Wilson, Judith, C. 'William Conor, 1881-1968: The Life and Work of an Ulster Artist'. Printed by Blackstaff Press, 1981
