Conor Harrington
Baroque figure painting collided with graffiti, usually with two men about to fight.
Conor Harrington was born in Cork in 1980, studied at Limerick, and came out of the Irish graffiti scene before moving to London. The paintings put an academically painted figure — often a man in eighteenth-century military or courtly dress, rendered with real Old Master facility — into a field of spray paint, drips and erasure, so that the historical body is half dissolved by the contemporary surface. The recurring subject is masculine display: duels, standoffs, drinking, posturing. He has painted large murals internationally and shows in London and New York.
The market divides cleanly between unique paintings on canvas or linen, which lead it, and a print output published in editions of around fifty to two hundred, frequently hand-finished with spray paint so that impressions differ. Hand-finishing should be documented, since it is what separates one sheet from another. Signature and numbering are in pencil, with a studio blindstamp on most editions. The canvases combine oil with spray paint and are often deliberately left partly raw, so surface handling and framing history matter.
If you own a work by Conor Harrington
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.