Breton Girl Reading (Bretonne Lisant) – Roderic O'Conor Art Print

She is not posing for the viewer. She has forgotten the viewer exists.

Breton Girl Reading (Bretonne Lisant) is one of Roderic O'Conor's quietest paintings — a young Breton woman absorbed entirely in her book, suspended in a world of deep reds, dark blues, and warm afternoon light. The composition is intimate and almost monastic in its stillness. Nothing dramatic happens here, and that is precisely its power.

Painted during O'Conor's years in Brittany, the work carries the influence of Gauguin and the Pont-Aven School, yet the emotional restraint is unmistakably his own. The thick brushwork, the glowing colour fields, the silence of the figure turned inward — everything in the painting feels distilled down to mood and atmosphere.

It is a painting people live with for years without tiring of it. The kind of work that changes a room not by dominating it, but by slowing it down.

Roderic O'Conor (1860–1940) was one of Ireland's most important modern painters and one of the few Irish artists closely associated with the Post-Impressionist movement in France. A contemporary of Gauguin and Van Gogh, his work hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland and major international collections.

Sizes & Format

• 40 × 50 cm / 16 × 20″
• Available framed (black, white, wood) or unframed

Print & Frame Details

Archival matte paper, 250gsm (110lb), acid-free and FSC-certified — off-white, uncoated. Framed prints: solid oak or ash wood frame, 20mm thick, with shatterproof protective glazing. Ready to hang, hanging kit included. Unframed prints up to A4 ship flat; larger sizes ship rolled in a protective tube.

Free Worldwide Shipping

Framed prints are packed with protective corners and wrap, boxed with reinforced edges, and braced with internal supports for extra rigidity (max 3 frames per package). Every order ships free, made to order and delivered from the hub closest to you: Ireland 3–7 business days · UK 4–8 · USA 5–10 · Canada 6–12 · Australia 7–14.