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Artist: William Conor RHA RUA ROI (1881-1968) Title: Jaunting Car, Main Street, Hillsborough, Co. Down Signature: signed 'Conor' top right Medium: wax crayon on paper Size: 39 x 48½cm (15.4 x 19.1in) Framed Size: 62 x 72cm (24.4 x 28.3in) Provenance: Private Collection a#morebtn { color: #de1d01; } a#morebtn:hover { cursor: pointer;} Drawn by a horse, a light jaunting car trundles along the Main street in Hillsborough, Co. Down. The car is driven by a jarvey, who holds the reins in one hand, and a stick in the other. There are three passengers, two young women and a man. The women smile at the jarvey, evidently enjoying the ride... Read more William Conor Lot 17 - 'Jaunting Car, Main Street, Hillsborough, Co. Down' Estimate: €8,000 - €12,000 Drawn by a horse, a light jaunting car trundles along the Main street in Hillsborough, Co. Down. The car is driven by a jarvey, who holds the reins in one hand, and a stick in the other. There are three passengers, two young women and a man. The women smile at the jarvey, evidently enjoying the ride. Using simple wax crayons, Conor delighted in depicting the ordinary people of Belfast and its environs. His drawings of country fairs and city streets are an endearing, but unsentimentalised, legacy of life in Ulster. This particularly the case with this drawing, as Hillsborough, with its royal palace and Georgian architecture, is noted for ceremonial occasions and affairs of state rather than such simple everyday scenes. Born in 1881, Conor initially trained as a lithographer and designer at the Belfast College of Art. During WWI, he received an important commission to paint portraits of soldiers and others involved in the war effort. By 1920 he had moved to London, where his work was promoted by a fellow-Belfast artist, John Lavery. Two years later, Conor was recommended by Lavery for another major commission, to record the ceremonial opening of Parliament in Norther Ireland, and over the following decades, he was asked to paint portraits of judges, politicians, aristocrats and army officers. However, nowadays Conor is far better known for his depictions of ordinary working people in Belfast and its environs. He drew shipbuilders, labourers, street musicians and washerwomen who struggled to maintain a livelihood, often in conditions of adversity. His paintings and drawings form a visual social history of the time, in town and country, with shoppers chatting, itinerant workers trudging along the road, people gossiping and children playing in the street. Peter Murray, September 2023