SEAN O’CONNOR – ARTIST 1909-1992
Sean O’Connor was a notable landscape artist whose subject matter predominantly revisited the natural environment of his native Killarney as well as the mountains, lakes and rugged Atlantic coast of Kerry. He was born in Fossa, near Killarney, where he lived for most of his life.
His father Joseph O’Connor (1877-1957) was a teacher of art in St Brendans College Killarney who had attended The Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in the early 1900’s, studying under Sir William Orpen.
Sean also spent time at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, he exhibited in 1940 at the Munster Fine Art Exhibition in Cork and a year later secured a studio in the Town Hall in Killarney where he painted and exhibited for the next fifty years. O’Connor was an associate of The Royal Hibernian Academy, first exhibiting there in 1945. He was also an active exhibiting member of the Watercolour Society of Ireland from 1946 to 1990.
His paintings are to be found today in many collections all over the world