An oil painting on board depicting a harbour scene with ships. Signed, J. Lavery and dated 1940, lower right. Framed. Additionally inscribed on the backside. John Lavery, Irish, 1856 to 1941, was an Irish painter best known for his portraits and wartime depictions. Antique English Fine Art, Marine Paintings, and Collectibles. One of a kind artwork.
Sketch For The Amazon, Wind Study (1911) Oil on canvas Signed bottom right; signed, titled, and dated to reverse H. 25" x W. 30 1/4" Provenance:: Dominion Gallery (Montreal)Sitter is Eileen Marion Lavery, daughter of Sir John Lavery. This painting is connected to two other paintings. One is another study titled "Eileen on Horseback, Tangier (Study for The Amazon)", completed in 1910 and auctioned viaJames Adam & Bonhams in Dublin, Ireland, on December 5th, 2001 (Important Irish Art, Lot 95); and the other is "The Amazon", completed in 1911, and currently held in the collections of the National Museums Northern Ireland (BELUM.U570,C6066, C6067).
Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941) Portrait Interior with Oriental Screen (c.1886) Oil on panel, 42 x 28cm (16 ½ x 11”) Provenance: Private Collection, Ireland It says much for John Lavery’s precocity that when he returned to Glasgow at the end of 1884, he sought subject matter in the social life of the city. A door had shut upon the goatherds and washerwomen that he had painted at Grez-sur-Loing as he moved on to the pleasures and pastimes of the urban middle classes who had recognised his talents. Tennis, croquet and yachting were new sources – as indeed were the simpler rituals of coming and going and dressing for an occasion. A visitor arrives, she sits for a moment and is offered a cup of tea. Au Bal, the watercolour, speaks for itself. An attractive young woman, a fan dangling from her wrist, consults her dance card – a face, a form and an action, isolated and observed across a crowded room (figs 1&2 in printed catalogue). Lavery’s work for the next fifty-odd years would abound in such scopophilia. The same contingency is inferred in the present work. There is, however, enough information in the model’s face in the present lot for us to suggest that she could be none other than Bella Cullen, who posed for Lavery’s A Fair Flower, (figs 4&5), a work exhibited at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in February 1887. Cullen was the short-lived consumptive teenage daughter of an Irish miner who lived in Paisley. Although elements of the present work remain unresolved, Lavery’s Portrait interior with oriental screen points to future ambitions. A career would be built on portraits of seated women and men – in many instances essayed in small unfinished oil sketches that indicate no more than simple studio props and the placing of arms and limbs. How someone sits or stands could be as revelatory as facial expression. A few swift notes were often enough to take us to the vivid sense of anticipation that animates the present study. Prof. Kenneth McConkey See illustrations referenced in this note in our online Flip / E-catalogue Fig 1 John Lavery, A Visitor, 1885, 46 x 46 cm, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin Fig 2 John Lavery, Au Bal, 1885, 30 x 30 cm (approx), Private Collection Fig 3 John Lavery, Portrait of a Young Lady, 1886, 77.5 x 64.2 cm, Private Collection BON150316 Fig 4 John Lavery, A Fair Flower, 1887, 38 x 26 cm, Private Collection 010904 Fig 5 John Lavery, Portrait interior with oriental screen, c. 1886, the present picture (detail).
Sir John Lavery, RA RSA RHA, Irish 1856-1941- Portrait sketch of Miss Alvilde Bridges, seated full-length, wearing a blue gown and a white veil; oil on canvasboard, signed 'J Lavery' (lower right), stamped 'STUDY / FOR THEIR / MAJESTIES / COURT / Buckingham / Palace, / 1931' (lower right), bears inscribed label attached to the backing board, bears label for 'James Bourlet & Sons' attached to the backing board, 50 x 34.5 cm. Provenance: Estate of The Late Sir John Lavery, R.A., sale, Christie's, London, 24 April 1964, lot 108 'Miss Bridges' (sold for the benefit of the Artist General Benevolent Institution); where purchased by the family of the sitter; thence by descent to the present owners. Note: In May 1931, Lavery and his wife and daughter were invited to attend court at Buckingham Palace for the presentation of debutantes, alongside their friends Lady Elsie Duveen and her daughter, Dorothy Rose, aka ‘Dolly'. Lavery was commissioned by Sir Joseph Duveen to paint the scene, producing an ensemble sketch, which is now in the Royal Collection [RCIN 407135], and individual studies for the 250 attendees, of which the present work is a particularly charming example. The larger, completed work 'Their Majesties' Court, Buckingham Palace', now known only by a black and white archive image (illustrated in Kenneth McConkey, 'Sir John Lavery', Edinburgh, 1993, p.181), was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1931, and its current whereabouts are unknown. The present portrait study would have been painted in preparation for Lavery's impressive lost work. According to the critic for The National Geographic, Lavery's finished painting 'caused a stir at this year's [1931] Royal Academy and... won unstinted praise from the critics...and [provided] ample evidence of the skill that has made Sir John the most sought after Court and Society portraitist of our time' (Loc.cit). This finely executed oil study would have been made from sittings at Lavery's studio then combined with a number of further studies to produce the large painting of the women of George V's court. Lavery's expressive and colourful brushstrokes imbue the composition with a patent sense of spontaneity and movement, and effectively evoke the diaphanous quality of the sitter's gown and veil, glimmering in the light of the ball. Here, Alvilde Bridges is shown resplendent in her court dress. In 1933, she married the Hon. Anthony Freskin Charles Hamby Chaplin, who would in 1949 become the 3rd Viscount Chaplin. They had one daughter, Clarissa Oenone Chaplin (1934-2021). While married to Lord Chaplin, she met James Lees-Milne, who became her second husband, during World War II. Over the years, she became a prominent and highly respected gardening expert and landscape designer.
Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (Irish, 1856-1941) 'La Belle Mère' - portrait of the artist's wife Hazel and his daughter, Eileen signed 'J Lavery' u.l., also signed, inscribed with title and dated '1911' verso, oil on canvas 128 x 90cm Provenance: The artist, by descent to his granddaughter, Lady Ann Forbes-Sempill; with Pyms Gallery, London, c.1990. Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin; Gallagher Galleries/Pyms Gallery, London, 'A Free Spirit', 1990, no 37. Literature: Kenneth McConkey, 'A Free Spirit: Irish Art, 1860-1960', Antique Collectors' Club/Pyms Gallery, 1990, pp.144-145. We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of this lot. Condition Report: Framed: 149 x 111.5cm The painting is executed in oil on a canvas support which has not been lined. A supplier’s stamp for Reeves and Son is present on the reverse with a painted inscription recording the artist and title. There is extensive mould across the back of the canvas and stretcher; a small area is present on the surface of the painting at the lower right corner. The canvas tension is good, there are minor undulations across the surface typical of an unlined painting of this age including a slight deformation at the lower left corner. Cracks have formed in the canvas and paint layers, following the edge of the wooden stretcher behind. In some areas small losses have occurred along these lines, notable along the upper edge and lower left side, although the surrounding paint appears stable. The paint layers are secure overall but some small losses and cracks have occurred. These are mainly located at the edges of the picture and in some areas have been overpainted with quite large, free brushstrokes. The overpaint is well matched to the original and only evident under ultraviolet light, possibly having occurred early on in the paintings history. A thin varnish layer is present across the surface but the overall appearance of the work is matte.
Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (Irish, 1856-1941) Portrait of a young lady Brush and ink on panel Signed lower right Dimensions: (Frame) 15.5 in. (H) x 12.5 in. (W) (Panel) 12 in. (H) x 9 in. (W)
Circle of Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (Irish, 1856 –1941) A view of a park through a balustrade Oil on panel Signed 'Daniel B ?...' verso Dimensions: (Frame) 6.75 in. (H) x 10 in. (W) (Panel) 5.75 in. (H) x 9 in. (W)
SIR JOHN LAVERY, R.A., R.H.A., R.S.A. (IRISH 1856-1941) DORA Signed, indistinctly inscribed ‘Dora’ verso, oil on canvas, framed as tondo 48.3cm x 48.3cm (19in x 19 in) Purchased by the previous owner’s grandfather whilst living in North America and thence by descent; Reeman Dansie Auctioneers, Colchester, 10 November 2021 (as Portrait of a Lady, Dora Little), where acquired by the previous owner;Private Collection, London.Exhibited:Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Sixteenth Carnegie International Exhibition, 1912, no.201;Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings by John Lavery, 1912, no.31. When he penned his article on Lavery’s work for L’Art et Les Artistes in 1905, the French critic, Camille Mauclair, famously dubbed the painter a ‘feminist before all’ – avant tout un feministe.[1] During the Third Republic, a male admirer of women could so be described.For such a connoisseur, a painter’s task was simply to idealize his muse in the creation of a masterpiece that would enthral the viewer. The objectification of women in this way was thus a social norm. One that was systematically pursued since the age of George Romney, and persisting until the emergence of current feminist theory in the 1970s.[2]The early twentieth century art critic, however, approached his topic with good authority, for the Irish painter was in the news. Within four years of the purchase by the French government of Père et fille 1897-1900 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), a second painting, Printemps, (fig 1) had been acquired for its modern collection.[3]This was unprecedented. To have one work by a contemporary Irish artist was unusual enough, but to have two signified a pre-eminence that applied to no other painter working in the British Isles.[4] Lavery was ‘Anglais’, of course, and with works in major European national collections in Germany, Belgium and Italy, his reputation went before him. Already a Salon star, throughout the 1890s he had been universally honoured, winning the first gold medal awarded by the Carnegie Institute’s Jury of Award at Pittsburgh in 1896. His subject in the recent French purchase, the personification of spring, shows a young woman who wears a straw hat, ribboned and plumed, according to current fashion, and in itself an expression of the anglomanie that accompanied the entente cordiale between Britain and France in 1904.[5]In visual terms, the phenomenon - the representation of ‘Fair Women’ - had gathered force and become the theme for occasional exhibitions from the 1890s onwards in Britain, where, as in France, most artists were men and ‘beauty’ was the province of women. Lavery had been drawn into this trend when one of the first such shows was organized by his Glasgow dealer, Thomas Lawrie, in 1893, and he capitalized on the growing modern sense of celebrity around the famous faces of actresses, dancers and concert performers. The ‘Fair Women’ idea moved to the Grafton Galleries, London, in the following year in a hugely popular historic survey exhibition that effectively consolidated the ongoing revival of British eighteenth century portraiture and Romney in particular (fig 2).[6] On the back of this surge of interest, tondos and oval cameos of beautiful women returned to fashion in the Edwardian years. Such precedents appealed to Lavery. They enabled the intimate close-up form of address we see in Dora (fig 3).[7]Accessories, the flowers of Printemps, were excluded, and colour, in dress and hat, was harmonized in Whistlerian terms, drawing the eye to the face of the sitter. Identity in such cases, was often a complex issue, and many of Lavery’s recent ‘fair women’ models of the period – ‘Phyllis’ or ‘Betty’ for instance – may always remain obscure, emphasising their essential purpose to convey the sense that beauty was not attached to social role or inherited wealth, so much as in the way someone presents themselves, in a form of address that charms the eye of the beholder. Reading a characteristic stance, the way someone sits, or a facial expression are among the essences of great painting, and Dora’s impassivity leaves us guessing. The face, its character, shape and form, fixing the gaze of the viewer, was much more important than a name, and as here, engagement is direct and penetrating. Is she inscrutable or provocative? Lavery asks these questions with tubes of coloured paste and a piece of fabric. The rest is métier.When Dora was dispatched to Pittsburgh in 1912, Lavery’s work had recently been featured at the Venice Biennale, and he had, after outcries in the press, been finally admitted to membership of the Royal Academy.[8] The thirty-six paintings representing the best of his work and including both French government purchases, were allocated a separate gallery in the Carnegie Institute International Exhibition. The display had been being solicited for several years, since the acquisition of his The Bridge at Grez in 1899.[9] Thus, covering nearly thirty highly productive years, the works made a ‘most excellent’ introduction to the year’s survey of contemporary painting and demonstrated ‘versatility as well as the soundness of Lavery’s art’. By the time this assessment was made the exhibition had closed and Dora, along with its illustrious peers was travelling to Chicago, carrying with it the painter’s ‘well merited … distinction’.[10][1] Camille Mauclair, ‘John Lavery’, L’Art et Les Artistes, 1905, tome 2, p. 7.[2] See for instance, Roy Strong introd., The Masque of Beauty, 1972 (exhibition catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, London) for a useful, but ‘of its time’ survey, that coincides with John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972) and the idea of ‘the gaze’, taken up by Laura Mulvey and others.[3] Père et fille, the first French state purchase for its modern collection at the Musée du Luxembourg, occurred in 1900. For further reference see Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, 2010 (Atelier Books, Edinburgh), pp. 71-3, 85-8.[4] George Frederick Watts, who died in 1904, aged 87, from an older generation, was the only exception.[5] A frisson for those ‘in the know’ was that this flower of Englishness was actually Lavery’s German model, Mary Auras.[6] Following Lawrie’s exhibition, the ‘Fair Women’ idea, based on Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘Dream of Fair Women’, was taken up by the Grafton Galleries, London in 1894; see William Sharp, Fair Women in Painting and Poetry, 1894 (‘Portfolio Monograph’, Seeley & Co).[7] Although it appears not to have been exhibited until 1912, Dora may well have been painted up to five years earlier.[8] McConkey 2010, pp. 107-8.[9] Kenneth McConkey, Lavery. On Location, 2023 (exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), pp. 36-7, 212.[10] LM, ‘The Carnegie Institute’s Exhibition: The Foreign Paintings’, Art and Progress, vol 3, no 10, August 1912, p. 682; James B Townsend, ‘Annual Carnegie Display’, American Art News, vol X no 29, 27 April 1912, p. 4. Press cuttings for the International Exhibition in 1912 appear not to have survived in the museum records transferred to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
Sir John Lavery RHA RA (1856-1941) Portrait of Mrs. C. F. Shanks with her Dog Oil on canvas, 76.3 x 64cm (30 x 25¼) Signed; Also signed, dated 1934 and inscribed 'Mrs C. F. Shanks, Posthumous Portrait' verso Provenance: Collection of the Hon. Francis D. Murnaghan Jr., thence by descent Lavery is renowned for his society and political portraits. These works in many ways served both the artist and sitter in their outward expression of wealth and status achieved by both in the very act of commissioning the paintings. Mrs C.F.Shanks, is depicted in half-length, looking out directly at the viewer, she has a strong confident presence that was often found in Lavery’s high society portraits. Though clothed in a fairly modest dress, placing her against a stark pale background allows Lavery to pick out the lustrous highlights of her string of pearls and pearl earrings. She is portrayed with her arm around her pet dog, and Lavery’s inscription verso indicates that the portrait, dated to 1934, was done posthumously. Lavery’s agent Joseph Duveen had made his name in the modern art world by recognizing the opportunity that existed between the wealth, on two accounts, of art in Europe and money in the America. He was a staunch promoter of British art overseas and works that he introduced to the market became the basis for numerous museum collections across the country. Duveen had already played the important role in selling to self-made industrialists on the notion that buying art was also buying upper-class status.In the same way that commissioning artists such as Lavery to paint your portrait was a way of expressing that upper-class status for those who had massive fortunes but lacked the legacy that traditional landowning families had by virtue of their lineage.
Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941) THE TURQUOISE SEA, MIMIZAN, 1917 oil on canvas signed lower left; signed, titled, dated and with Fine Art Society [London] label on reverse h:25 w:30 in. Provenance: William Marchant & Co., Goupil Gallery, Regent Street, London; Fine Art Society, by September 1980 (stock no 8845); Private collection; Phillip's, 17 November 1992, lot 16; Private collection Exhibited: 'Works by John Lavery and Emile Claus', Goupil Gallery, London, June 1917 Literature: Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, 2010 (Atelier Books), p. 133, 233 (note 108) In January 1917 the Laverys made their first channel crossing in three years. Since the commencement of hostilities in Europe, annual winter visits to their house in Tangier were out of the question. U-boat activity persisted, but it was a risk they were prepared to take when invited to stay at The Woolsack, the Duke of Westminster's shooting lodge at Mimizan in the Landes. In a letter to Eileen, the painter's daughter, he provides a description, of the crossing and the 'feeling of uncertainty about submarines, mines and the effect of icy water' followed by two depressing days in Paris - 'what a Paris! … shutters up, miserable people … everyone looked sad …', - before they caught the sleeper to Bordeaux, where a car met them at the station (1). The lodge, with its glowing log fires, was a haven and during their stay, other house guests including army officers on brief absences from the Front, came and went (2). Lavery was initially frustrated to discover that priority given to 'war materials' meant that his painting kit had not been shipped from London and the resourceful artist made his own easel, while a box to contain standard-sized 'Blanchet' canvases, acquired in Bordeaux, was made for him by a local carpenter (3). One of these canvases is the present work. Since 1914, Lavery had been unable to paint seascapes, and on this occasion, he was keen to re-engage with his favourite subject. A day or two before Mardi Gras, at the end of February, when the weather had improved, a party from the lodge headed to the coast, five miles away, where the artist found the sea 'wonderful', adding that 'for my part I could go on painting here for the rest of the warm weather' (4). He would, he wrote, have rented an empty chalet on Mimizan plage, had the creature-comforts of the Duke's residence not appealed so much to his wife, Hazel. The brief encounter with the Atlantic breakers was nevertheless significant. The young Lord Dalkeith, an adjutant at GHQ, was thrown from his horse into the 'rollers' when they were there, but it did not detain the painter. The Côte d'Émeraude demanded a different palette from that of Tangier or the Côte d'Azur. He had painted 'turquoise' seas before, but here he was denied distant promontories, rock outcrops and the constant two-way marine traffic that the Straits attracted (5). The sky was covered with thin cloud on this winter day on the Atlantic coast and the retreating breakers converted the ochre sands to greenish umber. From the high dunes, he could record the subtle transitions that took the incoming tide from turquoise back to pale emerald - colour and tone transitions you would not find when looking out to sea from the bay at Tangier (6). Visually, it was the much-needed fillip he required. There was time for only one other known canvas, The Lake, Mimizan, before they were due to leave The Woolsack - a simple composition that Winston Churchill would adopt when he visited the lodge in the spring of 1920 (7). Such was his zeal to continue producing seascapes that the Laverys left Mimizan and travelled south to St Jean de Luz at the beginning of March, where Lavery filled his box with new canvases showing the movement of cargo vessels in the bay (8). One could say that he was preparing himself for months ahead when, as an Official War Artist, he would be assigned to the Admiralty. Yet there was something more fundamental in this Mimizan moment when he re-engaged with the sea. It lay in the primordial nature of his subject - an elusive, ever-changing motif that had fascinated romantics and realists before him - Turner, Courbet, Whistler, Monet ... Kenneth McConkey 1. John Lavery to Eileen Lavery, letter dated 24 January 1917, Private Collection.; John Lavery, The Life of a Painter, 1940 (Cassell), pp. 141-2; here Lavery records a brief visit to his old friend, Jacques-Émile Blanche. 2. These included the Duchess de Gramont, Mr&Mrs Walter Rubens (brother of the songwriter Paul A Rubens), General Henry Rawlinson and other senior officers on leave from the Front. Rawlinson's portrait was painted during the stay. 3. Lavery designed a slotted box, roughly 25 x 30 inches, to take five standard canvases or canvas-boards which, when out on the motif, he slung over his shoulder. 4. John Lavery to Eileen Lavery, 21 February 1917 (Mardi Gras), Private Collection. 5. See for instance, The Turquoise Sea no 1, c. 1912, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; see https://artuk.org/discover/stories/john-laverys-seascapes-the-obsession-of-a-restless-painter . 6. Mimizan plage is lined with dunes that protect the low lying 'Landes' to this day. 7. Their host, Hugh Grosvenor, known as Bend'or, having fought with distinction in the Egyptian campaign, was recalled to London at the end of February, when the Laverys left. For Churchill's version of the lake scene, see David Coombs with Minnie S Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill, His Life and his Paintings, 2011, (Ware House Publishing), p. 54 (C502). 8. See Kenneth McConkey, Lavery On Location, 2023, (exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), pp. 152-3 (nos 69&70).
Artist: Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. (1856 -1941). Title: The Fall of the Leaf. Signed:John Lavery and dated 1884 (lower left). Medium: Oil on canvas. Unframed: 48.26cm by 55.88cm (19in. by 22in.). Framed: 59.06cm by 69.22cm (23 1/4in by 27 1/4in). NOTE: A special thanks to Kenneth McConkey, for his contribution of research and insight on this work (see images). McConkey is the author of John Lavery, A Painter and his World (2010), and guest curator of Lavery, On Location 2023-24, a major touring exhibition at the national galleries of Ireland and Scotland, and the Ulster Museum, Belfast.
Property from a Distinguished British Collection Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. 1856 - 1941 The Bathing Hour, Lido, Venice signed J Lavery (lower right); also signed JOHN LAVERY, titled, dated 1912 and inscribed (on the reverse) oil on canvas unframed: 45.5 by 76cm.; 18 by 30in. framed: 64 by 94cm.; 25¼ by 37in. Executed in 1912. We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.
SIR JOHN LAVERY R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A., P.R.P., H.R.O.I., L.L.B. (IRISH 1856-1941) A ROUGH SEA Signed, oil on canvas board 25.5cm x 35.5cm (10in x 14in) Fulton Bequest, 1933. Exhibited: London, The Goupil Gallery, John Lavery, RSA, RHA, 1908, no.64 (?);St Andrews, Crawford Art Centre, John Lavery: The Early Career, 1880-1895,1983, no.24;Paisley, Paisley Museum & Art Galleries, A Paisley Legacy: The Paisley Art Institute Collection, 2015, no.51. By 1906, Lavery’s encounters with the sea were confined to a few odd moments on the Antrim coast, the Clyde estuary and the beach at Tangier. His recent purchase of Dar-el-Midfah, the house on Mount Washington, to the west of the Moroccan port, made short descents to nearby beaches a daily possibility during annual winter sojourns.[1] Here he constructed a garden studio and spent up to four months each year. The painter now became obsessed with the moods of the sea, making rapid sketches on 10 x 14-inch canvas-boards in all weathers. Like Turner, he was fascinated by the subtle colour transitions that led the eye from foreground foam to sea over sand, and on to the shrill cerulean and cobalt blues of the deep. Often, at low tide, his shoreline would be punctuated by rocky outcrops that would become sources of fascination for his stepdaughter, Alice, in later years. In the present instance, one of the earliest treatments of this enticing subject matter, we find a rock cluster that would feature in a number of larger canvases such as Tangier Bay, Rain, 1910 (Ulster Museum, Belfast. One only had to move a little to the left or right for a new abstract arrangement to suggest itself.We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for writing this catalogue entry.[1] McConkey 2010, pp. 96-105. With the exception of 1912-13, and the war years, Lavery returned every winter until 1919-20, to Tangier.
SIR JOHN LAVERY R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A., P.R.P., H.R.O.I., L.L.B. (IRISH 1856-1941) THE GLEN CONCERT Signed and inscribed ‘James Fulton from J. Lavery’, oil on canvas 46cm x 36cm (18in x 14in) Fulton Bequest, 1933. Exhibited:St Andrews, Crawford Art Centre, John Lavery: The Early Career, 1880-1895,1983, no.11;Paisley, Paisley Museum & Art Galleries, A Paisley Legacy: The Paisley Art Institute Collection, 2015, no.44. Literature:McConkey, Kenneth, Sir John Lavery, Canongate Press, Edinburgh, 1993, p.42;McConkey, Kenneth, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, Atelier Books, Edinburgh. 2010, pp.31 & 214. Although essentially a private estate, the Fultons treated the Gleniffer braes to the south of the town as an area where all the people of Paisley could roam freely, with their backs to the symbols of toil. The perfect expression of this peaceful recreational haunt is Lavery’s A Summer Afternoon, 1886.One annual occasion disrupted the natural harmony of the braes, replacing quiet reverie with hubbub and birdsong with a massed choir. The annual Glen Concerts, inaugurated in 1874, were established to raise money for good causes, and for the erection of statues to Robert Burns and the Paisley weaver poet, Robert Tannahill. Attendance was reckoned to average between 20,000 and 30,000, for whom a four-hundred-voice choir sang favourite Scottish airs. Lavery turned out for the event in 1887 and a photograph shows him working on what is probably the present canvas. The Glen Concert is a work of great significance in the Lavery oeuvre. In the years to come he would frequently adopt the role of ‘man in the crowd’, to record a race meeting, bullfight, military parade, or busy Moroccan marketplace. In such situations he had the ability to shut out all distracting antics. Here, with its remarkable fluidity, in which grassy slopes are covered by hordes of spectators, enlivened by one or two tiny touches of vermillion banners, the green hillsides of the glen are cast into a remarkable relief. The mottled landscape is almost an exercise in abstraction as, undeterred by onlookers, Lavery’s formidable powers of concentration are on public display.We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for writing this catalogue entry.
SIR JOHN LAVERY R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A., P.R.P., H.R.O.I., L.L.B. (IRISH 1856-1941) WATERFALL, THE GLEN Signed and dated 1886, oil on canvas 61cm x 46cm (24in x 18in) Fulton Bequest, 1933. Exhibited: Paisley, Clark Hall, Portraits, Pictures and Sketches Painted in the Neighbourhood, November 1886, (? uncatalogued exhibition);Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, The Discovery of Scotland, 1978, no11.7;St Andrews, Crawford Art Centre, John Lavery: The Early Career, 1880-1895,1983, no.9;Hankyu Department Store, Umeda Main Store, Osaka, Japan, The Beautiful Landscape of Scotland, 11-16 November 1983; touring to Tenmaya Department Store, Okayama Main Store, Okayama, Japan, 18-23 November 1983;Edinburgh, The Fine Art Society, Sir John Lavery RA, 1856-1941, 1984, no 22 and tour to London, The Fine Art Society, Belfast, Ulster Museum, Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland;Paisley, Paisley Museum & Art Galleries, A Paisley Legacy: The Paisley Art Institute Collection, 2015, no.28.Literature:McConkey, Kenneth, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, Atelier Books, Edinburgh, 2010, p.214, note 118. During 1884, the last of his student years in France, John Lavery was keen to prepare for a triumphant return to Scotland, sending recent works to exhibitions in Paisley, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Kilmarnock. His continental mannerisms brought him to the attention of collectors and fellow painters alike, and among these was Joseph Fulton, co-owner of a large cloth scouring, finishing and dyeing works, inherited from his grandfather. The family was one of Paisley’s biggest employers. The Fultons lived in some style at Glenfield House, a baronial mansion built in 1859, on an estate overlooking the town. There, three small dams were constructed to supply soft water to the family firm from burns that flowed from the nearby Gleniffer Braes. The mill-owner offered Lavery a cottage adjacent to one of these ponds, close to the house, to act as his studio while he painted the portraits of his daughters (Paisley Museum), and other works in the district.[1]These included scenes in the Paisley suburbs and views of the braes, including the Craigielinn waterfall, the subject of the present work. The Parasol (Private Collection), a watercolour of 1885 indicates that the artist was already familiar with the woodland paths leading to the site.[2]Lavery was no stranger to such an environment. Many recent canvases had been executed en plein air in the forest of Fontainebleau, within walking distance of his hotel at Grez-sur-Loing. One of these was even inscribed as an ‘Impression’, indicating his awareness of the work of the French Impressionists.[3] However, Lavery’s malleable approach to handling also embraced possibilities he found in the work of Bastien-Lepage. Specifically, this alluded first and foremost to massing the essential shapes and forms of the composition, adroitly placing the figure as a focal point for the beholder’s eye, and mapping colour and tone transitions, before attending to detail. These essential tenets derived from modern French ‘Naturalism’ are evident in the Waterfall: The Glen composition. Even today, after nearly 140 years, one can see that Lavery was faithful to the setting. Back then, crystal pure tumbling waterfalls, sometimes incorporating a female bather, had been used to symbolise the source of human life – as in Gustave Courbet’s La Source 1868 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Lavery’s female figure, picking her steps down the ravine, carries none of this allegory. She is simply there, before us, as we turn a corner. Muse? Motif? Or chance encounter? She gives scale to this fold in the terrain with its sounding cataract.We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for writing this catalogue entry.[1] Thereafter, what was originally ‘Burn Crook’, became known as ‘Lavery Cottage’. The Pond at the Glen, Paisley, represents the view of Glenfield House a few steps from Lavery’s cottage (both now demolished). During these years Lavery also maintained a studio in St Vincent Street, Glasgow, in what might be described as the artists’ quarter, in close proximity to Glasgow Art Club, of which he was a member.[2] For The Parasol, see Ulster Museum and Fine Art Society, Sir John Lavery RA 1856-1941, 1984, no. 18.[3] Lavery’s An Impression dans la sous bois [sic], 1884 was sold at Christie’s, 10 May 2007 (essay by Kenneth McConkey).
SIR JOHN LAVERY R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A., P.R.P., H.R.O.I., L.L.B. (IRISH 1856-1941) PAISLEY LAWN TENNIS CLUB Signed and dated 1889, oil on canvas 63.5cm x 76cm (25in x 30in) Presented by James Begg, Esq., President of Paisley Art Institute (1920-27), 1917. Exhibited:Paisley, Paisley Art Institute, Annual Exhibition, 1918, no.157, where titled ‘Courts of the Paisley Lawn Tennis Club, June 1889’;St Andrews, Crawford Art Centre, John Lavery: The Early Career, 1880-1895,1983, no.13;Paisley, Paisley Museum & Art Galleries, A Paisley Legacy: The Paisley Art Institute Collection, 2015, no.12.Literature: McConkey, Kenneth, Sir John Lavery, Canongate Press, Edinburgh, 1993, p.42;McConkey, Kenneth, ‘Tennis Parties’, in Ann Sumner ed., Court on Canvas, Tennis in Art, Barber Institute & Philip Wilson Publishers, 2011, pp.63-64, repr. fig 3.17. During the early summer of 1889 Lavery returned to Paisley to make kit-kat sketches of dignitaries who had been invited to the reception held for The State Visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition in the previous year.[1] These tiny portraits would come together with 250 others in a large commemorative canvas depicting the event (Glasgow Museums). His year had begun in a flurry of travel arrangements and studio appointments. By the late Spring the project was well underway. Lavery had just returned from Darmstadt where he had painted the portrait of Princess Alix of Hesse (Private Collection), and other members of the royal retinue, when the short trip from Glasgow to Paisley took place. A visit, however brief, could not be made without calling upon friends in the town where he had staged his first solo exhibition in 1886. Principally these were members of the Fulton family who, on one particular day, had taken their daughter, Alice, to the local tennis club. [2] While the girl is omitted from the present canvas, both small oil sketches produced in preparation for it include her, while focussing upon the figure group at the right of the composition. A note in the minutes of Paisley Art Institute in 1915 identifies the women taking afternoon tea as Mrs William MacKean and Mrs Archibald Coats of Woodside, while the lady in the background wearing a red shawl was Mrs Stewart Clark of Filnside.[3] The three tennis players, glimpsed through blossoming trees are Nina Fullerton, Hugh Macfarlane and the watercolourist, Alexander Balfour McKechnie.[4] The note concludes by describing the present work as ‘an excellent example of the artist’s earlier “Impressionist” style’, implying that, as with the preparatory sketches, it was completed on the spot. The spot, the original Paisley lawn tennis club in Garthland Place, is likely to have been sited on land partly occupied by the Abercorn Bowling Club, close to the railway line.[5]Lawn tennis was, by 1889, approaching the height of its popularity. Invented by Major Clopton Wingfield in 1874, with the unappealing name, ‘Sphairistike’, it quickly replaced croquet as a middle-class pastime when boxed sets of essential equipment went on the market.[6] For the fashion-conscious factory-owners of Paisley, as the present canvas confirms, it provided the ideal theatre for social rivalries. For the artist however, in the midst of a year when time was measured in end-on appointments, dropping into the Paisley Lawn Tennis Club was a moment of delight. One had only to open a little pochade box or erect a lightweight tripod easel for the picture to come to him, unbidden. Lavery would later describe such moments as ones that brought him to ‘concert pitch’. These were times when in an elysian garden of women, the scene composed itself if you were quick enough to grasp its essence. In the present instance, there was no hesitation.We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for writing this catalogue entry.[1] McConkey 2010, pp. 43-48.[2] Two sketches are known to have been painted on the spot. A companion sketch (Private Collection) shows Alice holding a racquet on her lap while the women on the left, one holding a scarlet parasol, have swapped places. The background, simply indicated with a broad brush, represents one of the courts.[3] These women were of course, dynastic leaders of west of Scotland society. I am grateful to Andrea Kusel of Paisley Museum & Art Galleries for bringing this note to my attention in 2011.[4] Both Macfarlane and McKechnie were prominent members of the Club, the former taking on the role of Honorary Treasurer by the 1891-92 season.[5] Kusel, as above. I am also grateful to Michael Durning and Victoria Irvine, (emails 2015-18), for their valuable work on Lavery’s Fulton connections.[6] Sumner, 1911, p. 13.
Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (Irish, 1856-1941) Portrait sketch of a young woman, bust-length signed and indistinctly dated 'J. Lavery 94(?)' l.r., brush and ink on board, varnished 29 x 21.5cm Condition Report: Overall: 39 x 31.5cm The ink appears to be have been absorbed slightly into the board. The board has slight undulations with some small holes and dents.
Sir John Lavery RHA RA (1856-1941) Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins A pair, lithographic prints, 44.5 x 36.4cm (17.5 x 14.25''); & 43.5 x 34 cm (17.25 x 13.25'') respectively. Artists' proof blindstamp on margin, published by Wilson Hartnell & Co., Dublin (1922) Each signed in pencil by the artist and the sitter. Lavery and his wife Hazel got to know Griffith and Collins during the Treaty negotiations in London, where the original portraits were painted. The couple used their social connections to assist the Irish delegates while negotiations were ongoing. Within months however the two men were dead, Griffith having suffered a heart attack, while Collins was assassinated at Béal na Bláth. The original portrait of Griffith is in Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, while Collins portrait is believed lost.
Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941) MISS ALICE FULTON AT PAISLEY LAWN TENNIS CLUB, 1889 oil on canvas signed and dedicated [To Miss Alice Fulton] lower right h:10 w:14 in. During the early summer of 1889 John Lavery returned to Paisley to make kit-kat sketches of members of the Clark family, the town’s Provost, Robert Cochrane, and other dignitaries who had been invited to the reception held for The State Visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition in the previous year [1]. These tiny portraits would come together with 250 others in a large commemorative canvas depicting the event (Glasgow Museums). The year had begun in a flurry of travel arrangements and studio bookings. By the late spring the project was well underway. Lavery had just returned from Darmstadt where he had painted the portrait of Princess Alix of Hesse, (Private Collection) and other members of the royal retinue, when the short trip from Glasgow to Paisley was arranged. A visit, however brief, could not be made without calling upon friends in the town where he had staged his first solo exhibition in 1886. Principally these were members of the Fulton family who, on that particular day, had taken their daughter, Alice, to the local tennis club. The friendship began within months of Lavery’s return from Grez sur Loing at the end of 1884, when the artist came to the attention of Joseph Fulton, Alice’s father. The co-owner of a large cloth scouring, finishing and dyeing works, inherited from his grandfather, the family was one of Paisley’s biggest employers. The family lived in some style, at Glenfield House, a baronial mansion built in 1859, on an estate overlooking the town. There, three small dams were constructed to supply soft water to the Fultons’ factory from a burn that flowed from the nearby Glenifer Braes. The mill-owner offered Lavery a cottage adjacent to one of these ponds, close to the house, to act as his studio (fig. 1) while he painted the portraits of Alice and Eva, his daughters (Paisley Art Institute), and other works in the district [2]. During these years Lavery also maintained a studio in St Vincent Street, Glasgow, in what might be described as the artist’s quarter, in close proximity to Glasgow Art Club, of which he was a member. The present tennis club sketch is one of two known to have been painted on the spot, relating to a larger, more finished canvas depicting the blossoming cherry tree canopy that fringed the court (fig 2) [3]. Swiftly executed, the present sketch carries all the freshness of the moment when a conversation continues, oblivious to the girl whose eye engages the painter. Three years before, when a mere infant and commanded to sit still, Lavery had been obliged to resort to photographs to obtain her likeness. Ten years on from the present sketch, he would return for more formal portraits of her and her uncle, when she adopted a distinctly Whistlerian pose (fig 3). However, in the midst of a year when time was measured in end-on appointments, dropping into the Paisley Lawn Tennis Club, was a moment of delight. One had only to open a little pochade box or erect a lightweight tripod easel for the picture to come to him, unbidden. Lavery would later describe such moments as ones that brought him to ‘concert pitch’. These were times when in the elysian garden of women, the scene composed itself if you were quick enough to grasp its essence. In the present instance, there was no hesitation. [1] For further reference to this project, see Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, 2010 (Atelier Books, Edinburgh), pp. 43-48. [2] Thereafter, what was originally ‘Burn Crook’, became known as ‘Lavery Cottage’. The Pond at the Glen, Paisley, (fig 1) represents the view of Glenfield House (now demolished) a few steps from Lavery’s cottage. [3] McConkey 2010, p. 49; see also Kenneth McConkey, ‘Tennis Parties’ in Ann Sumner ed., Court on Canvas, Tennis in Art, 2011, (exhibition catalogue, Barber Institute, Birmingham), pp. 63-4. In the companion sketch (Private Collection), Alice holds a tennis racquet on her lap and the women on the left, one holding a scarlet parasol, have swopped places. The background, simply indicated with a broad brush, represents one of the courts.
An English WWI era lithograph poster after the oil painting Night and the Arrival of the German Delegates: HMS Queen Elizabeth, 15 November 1918 by John Lavery, Irish, 1856 to 1941, a painter best known for his portraits and wartime depictions. Inscribed lower center. Published in England. First World War English Posters For Collectors.
Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A 1856 - 1941 Tangier oil on canvas unframed: 33 by 41 cm.; 13 by 16 1/4 in. framed: 38.5 by 46.5 cm.; 15 by 18 1/4 in. ----------------------------------------------------- Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A 1856 - 1941 Tangier huile sur toile sans cadre: 33 by 41 cm.; 13 by 16 1/4 in. avec cadre: 38.5 by 46.5 cm.; 15 by 18 1/4 in.
(Belfast 1856–1941 Kilmoganny) Cigarette Makers in Seville, signed J. Lavery, inscribed on the reverse “cigarette makers in Seville by John Lavery. A mark of sincere esteem to B. McCoy 1924”, oil on canvas laid down on board, 34 x 25.5 cm, framed
SIR JOHN LAVERY (IRISH 1856-1941)ORIGINAL SKETCH FOR 'THE HEARING OF THE APPEAL OF SIR ROGER CASEMENT'Signed, dated 1917 and dedicated to Lord Charles Darling (lower left), variously inscribed by Lord Darling (verso)Oil on canvas-board25.5 x 38cmProvenance:Collection of Charles John Darling, 1st Baron Darling (1849-1936)Thence by descent to the present ownerThe board is inscribed verso by Charles Darling as follows: 'The original sketch made for Court by Sir John Lavery ARA for his picture of the hearing of the appeal of Sir Roger Casement against his conviction for High Treason - Monday 17th July 1917.Sargeant Sullivan (for appellant) addressing the Court. The justices (from left to right) Scrutton, Bray, Darling (presiding), Lawrence, Atkin.Charles Darling'By 1916, having recently requested an oil sketch of his late wife (lot 44), Mr Justice Darling was well aware of Lavery's pre-eminence. Regarding himself as something of an aesthete, the vainglorious judge, had been portrayed during his rise to the Bench, by Charles Wellington Furse (National Portrait Gallery) and George Henry (Colchester and Ipswich Museums) in 1890 and 1898 respectively, and in 1904, having secured Lavery's small sketch of his daughter, he returned to the painter for his own controversial portrait (fig 1). Even though its theatrical air matched the sitter's reputation, portraying Darling as a hanging judge was considered inappropriate by some.Now a widower, Darling had just received the news that his only son (see lot 45) was severely wounded on the Western Front when he received the call to preside over the Casement Appeal in July 1916. For public and personal reasons, leniency in this instance was not an option for a staunch Unionist who had trained Edward Carson in his chambers. Since his own portrait was painted, he had seen Lavery take on important commissions and maintain his pre-eminence with the portrait of the Royal Family, 1913 (National Portrait Gallery). In 1915, he would have noted the newsworthiness of the artist's Wounded, London Hospital, (Dundee Museum and Art Gallery), painted in the wake of the retreat from Mons, and shown in an Academy exhibition castigated for largely ignoring the unfolding horror of war. This was an artist unafraid to tackle a difficult project and, in the summer of 1916, when Darling was appointed to try the Casement Appeal, he was in a position to offer just such a testing opportunity. To read the full catalogue note written by Kenneth McConkey please follow the link below:
SIR JOHN LAVERY (IRISH 1856-1941)PORTRAIT OF LIEUTENANT JOHN CLIVE DARLING, XX HUSSARSOil on canvasSigned (centre right); further signed, titled and dated 1910 (transcribed verso, not in artist's hand)38 x 33cm (14¾ x 12 in.)Provenance:Collection of Charles John Darling, 1st Baron Darling (1849-1936)Thence by descent to the present ownerSuave and stylish, the portrait of the dashing young Lieutenant John Clive Darling is almost unique in Lavery's oeuvre. Although small in scale, in its precision, it cannot be regarded as a sketch of the type preferred by the sitter's father, Sir Charles Darling, then serving as a judge on the Oxford circuit. In 1904 the judge had written to Lavery requesting a small sketch of his daughter, Diana Janet Darling, making his specification clear:What I should like would be an impression, or sketch - such as Vandyke (sic) and others sometimes made as preliminary to a portrait and I should like it small ... I don't want a highly finished work but should prefer a study. Darling may well have also been thinking back to the swagger of his son's first portrait, painted by William James Yule in 1896, when the present sitter was aged nine. It had been one of the most admired portraits of its day. Educated at Eton and Sandhurst, John Clive Darling (1887-1933) joined the 20th Hussars in 1906, rose to the rank of captain in 1913 and retired as Major in 1923, publishing an account of his regiment's actions in the Great War. Following the retreat from Mons in 1914 where the Hussars participated in the first (and last) cavalry charge, he and his brigade were consigned to the trenches where, in 1916, he was wounded in action. Mentioned in dispatches he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. In recovery at Hill House Red Cross Hospital, Lyndhurst, Hampshire, he met, and in 1918, married Eleanor Joan Powell. In retirement, Darling raised and exhibited New Forest ponies and contributed to local causes.
SIR JOHN LAVERY (IRISH 1856-1941)PORTRAIT OF MARY CAROLINE, LADY DARLINGOil on canvas-boardSigned (lower right); variously inscribed in Lord Darling's hand (verso)35.5 x 25.5cm (13¾ x 10 in.)Provenance:Collection of Charles John Darling, 1st Baron Darling (1849-1936)Thence by descent to the present ownerMary Caroline Darling (née Greathed, 1863-1913), was a General's daughter. She married Charles Darling in 1885, the year in which her husband was called to the Bar, while unsuccessfully contesting the Hackney South constituency for the Conservatives. During her husband's political career, which lasted until 1897, she gave birth to a son, John Clive Darling (see lot 45). Two daughters followed when her husband returned to the Bench. Lavery was first commissioned to paint her portrait when painting her husband in his robes of office, following that of their daughter, Diana Janet Darling. The present sketch, as indicated on its reverse, was painted two years after Lady Darling's death from a photograph taken in 1892. Kenneth McConkey
SIR JOHN LAVERY (IRISH 1856-1941)PORTRAIT OF MINNIE PLOWDEN AND HER SON HUMPHREY, STUDY FOR A FULL LENGTH PORTRAITOil on canvas Signed (lower left)35.5 x 25cm (13¾ x 9¾ in.)Provenance:Minnie Plowden, thence by descent to the present owner Literature:Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, 2010 (Atelier Books, Edinburgh), p. 71In 1898 Lavery, with the help of fellow Glasgow Boys and under the Presidency of James McNeill Whistler, established the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, with the idea of staging annual exhibitions or 'art congresses' in London. As Vice-President, Lavery's three contributions to this radical departure were Portrait Group (Père et Fille), 1897, (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), A Garden in France, 1897 (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) and Mrs Roger Plowden and Humphrey for which the present canvas is the oil sketch. It is not entirely clear where and when the painter met the Plowdens. A member of an old Catholic legal and clerical family that hailed at the time of the Crusades from Shropshire, Roger Herbert Plowden was the son of a banker in Rome where, in his early years he led the life of a country gentleman. After his marriage to the daughter of Henry Jump of Woolton, near Liverpool in August 1883, he and his wife led a peripatetic existence between Rome, the south of France, their house at 32 Portman Square, London and Scottish estates, leased for the hunting and shooting seasons. They had been living in Rome before returning recently to Scotland where in 1897 Plowden rented and then purchased the Strachur estate on Loch Fyne from the Duke of Argyll. As with most large portrait commissions (fig. 1) Lavery planned his composition with a swift sketch as shown in Lot 43. In comparing the two it is instantly apparent that the composition has been reversed and the boy's leg positions changed. His silver suit has also been replaced by a black tabard. Sittings cannot have been easy since Minnie Plowden was unwell and increasingly immobile. As a 'mother and son' subject, the finished work is nevertheless a fine complement in tone, colour, handling and scale to the Orsay 'father and daughter'. For its part, the sketch is also more than a snapshot, making play with the flash of red in the sitter's cape and creating, in its soft greys, its own fine harmonies. Kenneth McConkey
SIR JOHN LAVERY (IRISH 1856-1941)A GREY DAY Oil on canvas-board Signed (lower right)25.5 x 35.5cm (10 x 13¾ in.)Provenance:William Marchant & Co., The Goupil Gallery, London (1908)Exhibited:London, William Marchant & Co, The Goupil Gallery, Paintings by John Lavery RSA, RHA, 1908, no 50Literature:Walter Shaw Sparrow, John Lavery and his Work, London, 1911, p. 189Although we cannot be certain where A Grey Day was painted, given that it passed through the Goupil Gallery in 1908, it seems very likely that the present work represents the Straits of Gibraltar viewed from a hillside to the west of the Medina at Tangier. Having recently purchased a house and garden on the hilltop in question - Mount Washington - Lavery had the opportunity to study the moods of the sea from several discreet vantage points. This accounts for the variety of effects that characterise the many seascapes that followed - the high and low horizons, for instance, that appear in this and other small seascape sketches, such as A Rough Sea (Paisley, Art Institute Collection, held by Paisley Museum and Art Galleries), also shown in the Goupil exhibition. While many of these small sketches were painted in full winter sunshine, there were occasions when grey overhanging clouds must have reminded the artist of his earliest paintings of the Irish Sea seen from the Antrim coast in the late 1880s. Vivid colour arrived with his first visits to the North African coast in the 1890s, but it was a decade later when he returned to a more sustained engagement with the great maritime trade route that other, larger 'grey days' appeared (for example, see A Grey Day, Tangier, 1911 held by the Art Institute of Chicago from the George F. Porter Collection). While artists' enchantment with the sea stretches back to the romantic generation and beyond, the importance of the little sketches of 1906-8, lies in the fact that they provide instances in which Lavery reassesses one of Whistler's favourite themes and works through the more recent advances he had noted in Monet's work. In the first exhibitions of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, as the society's vice-president and prime mover, he had the opportunity to view the work of these mentors at close quarters, and move on. Up until the outbreak of war, every winter with only one exception, was spent on the Moroccan heights and seascapes with passing ships became a leitmotif. With its heavy sky, breaking waves and wrack-strewn sands, A Grey Day hailed this renewed fascination. Kenneth McConkey
An English WWI era lithograph poster after the oil painting Night and the Arrival of the German Delegates: HMS Queen Elizabeth, 15 November 1918 by John Lavery, Irish, 1856 to 1941, a painter best known for his portraits and wartime depictions. Inscribed lower center. Published in England. First World War English Posters For Collectors.
John LAVERY 1856-1941 Jasmin, Fez - 1920 Huile sur toile Signée en bas à droite "J. Lavery" Signée, datée, titrée et située au dos "JASMIN. / BY JOHN LAVERY. / 5 CROMWELL PLACE LONDON. / FEZ.1920." h: 76,20 w: 63,70 cm Provenance : Fine Art Society, Londres, circa 1970 Sotheby's, New York, 24/01/1980, lot 326 Schweitzer Galleries, New York Collection particulière, Royaume-Uni Bonhams, Londres, 30/06/2021, lot 21 Collection particulière, Royaume-Uni Commentaire : Signed lower right "J. Lavery" Signed, dated, titled and located on the reverse "JASMIN. / BY JOHN LAVERY / FEZ.1920." Lot en provenance hors Maroc Estimation 600 000 - 800 000 MAD
Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941) LONDON HOSPITAL, 1914 oil on canvas signed lower right; signed, titled, dated and with William Rodman & Co. label on reverse h:25 w:30 in. Provenance: Collection of the Artist; By whom donated to Lady Dixon in aid of The Ulster Division Fete, 1917; With William Rodman & Co, Belfast; Collection of Malcolm Mercer; Thence by descent to Stanley Mercer; Phillips, London, 13 November 1984, lot 78; Private collection; Christie's, London, 6 November 1992, lot 53, Private collection Literature: 'By Private Wire', Belfast Newsletter, 3 July 1917, p. 5 Wounded by John Lavery RA, Sold for a War Charity, The Sphere, 14 July 1917, p.viii (ill.); Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery: A Painter and his World, Atelier Books, Edinburgh, 2010, pp.125, 231 When Lavery's large retrospective exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries drew to a close in the summer of 1914, the artist and his wife set off for a tour of Ireland in the knowledge that tensions were increasing in Europe. They were in Dublin when war was declared on 4 August, but delayed their return in order to visit the north coast. When they got back to London, St James's Park had been requisitioned as a military camp and the city was in uproar. As weeks went by, with the rout of Belgium and the arrival of 250,000 refugees, early euphoria and predictions of a swift victory evaporated. Lavery quickly realized that his best way to support the war effort was through his work, but Government restrictions blocked his early ambitions to equip a motor-bus and drive to the Western Front. So, in March 1915 he arranged to paint the wounded at London Hospital. The 'London' had been the first hospital to receive casualties in the early weeks of the war. By the end of the month the painter was installed in the hospital's Charlotte Ward, observing Miss Frances Grace Coombe - affectionately referred to as 'Sister Charlotte' - attending a wounded soldier. At least two general views of the ward were painted alongside the present canvas, and these became the source material from which Wounded, London Hospital, 1915, the Dundee canvas, was painted at the artist's studio in Cromwell Place (fig 1&2) (2). The present version is unique in indicating both setting and central motif. It also tells us that the actual soldier only became Scots belatedly in the exhibited canvas. The finished picture was shown at the Royal Academy in 1915 where one critic described it as 'the most remarkable achievement' in an exhibition that was widely criticized for failing to come to grips with what was described as an unprecedented 'struggle for existence' (3). Lady Cynthia Asquith, who confirmed that the Academy seemed 'unaffected by cataclysm', saw Wounded: London Hospital as one of the very few authentic attempts to address the effects of war, noting its '… very good atmosphere', and that 'it almost made one smell the antiseptics' (4). It was immediately popular with the wider public and those soldiers able to visit the show tended to congregate in front of it (5). By the time the large version arrived in its permanent home in Dundee at the beginning of 1917, the title had been changed to The First Wounded, London Hospital, 1914, even though as MP and RHR Park point out, over 2000 soldiers are likely to have been treated around the time the picture was actually being painted. None of this however, detracts from the documentary character of the present study. Lavery for instance, is likely to have included the wounded soldier with a foot sling simply because he was there at the time. Foot injuries following the severe winter of 1914-5, when many infantrymen suffered frostbite and trench fever was common. This figure was however, excluded from the final work, while the table containing bowls, bottles and dressings was transformed into a metal trolley. Perhaps to underwrite the circumstantial authenticity of the scene, the artist also chose to identify his principal soldier as a Gordon Highlander in the Dundee version. Lavery continued to report on the war, also painting the wounded of St George's Hospital who, on good days, with their nurses, took the air in Hyde Park. He also saw the death tolls rise when the Ulster and Munster Divisions were slaughtered on the banks of the Somme in July 1916. On the first anniversary of that terrible offensive, a series of fund-raising activities were organized throughout Ulster, on what was named 'Forget-Me-Not' Day, 29 June 1917. The occasion was marked in London by a Garden Fete at Hampden House in Green Street, home of the Duke of Abercorn on 4 July to which the present study was generously donated (6). It is not known if the Laverys attended this event, opened by Sir Edward Carson and Lady Londonderry. (7) Shortly thereafter, Lavery received his commission as an Official War Artist and was off to paint Naval operations, including the North Sea convoys which he observed from armed airships. Intrepid though this was, he considered that in avoiding the Western Front, his war experience was limited. However, as the present work indicates, no one in 1915 was more committed than he to reporting on the great 'struggle for existence', and those who suffered in its wake - and while others re-imagined Napoleonic or Crimean battle scenes confected in khaki and grey, he stood out for documentary authenticity. In its central motif , there is no better sense of human vulnerability than in the pale exposed flesh of the young soldier addressed with Samaritan tenderness by Sister Coombe. The effects of war can only be truly seen to be believed when recorded with sympathy by the consummate artist-reporter. Kenneth McConkey 1. A label on the frame relates to an earlier exhibit at the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh, and not the present work. Lavery clearly decided to re-use this original frame when the present picture was donated to the Ulster Division Fete. A label on the stretcher refers to a subsequent sale by William Rodman & Co of Belfast. A further inscription relates to subsequent ownership. 2. The picture was to be reproduced in colour by the Fine Art Society and placed on sale for the benefit of the hospital. See MP Park and RHR Park, 'Art in Wartime: The First Wounded, London Hospital, August 1914', Medical Humanities, vol 37, no. 1, June 2011, p. 23-26; also Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, 2010 (Atelier Books), pp. 125-7. As Park and Park point out, this large canvas was originally entitled Wounded, London Hospital, 1915 when shown at the Academy, and given that it was being painted at the time of the Academy submission deadline, it could not represent the first wounded soldiers who arrived at the London Hospital shortly after the outbreak of war. 3. Anon 'The Royal Academy Exhibition, 1915', The Studio, vol 65, 1915, p. 25. 4. Lady Cynthia Asquith, with a foreword by LP Hartley, Diaries, 1915-1918, 1968 (Hutchinson), p. 43, (entry for 15 June 1915). 5. Anon, 'Popular Academy Pictures - The First Public Day', The Times, 4 May 1915, p. 11. Such was its popularity that prints were made by the Fine Art Society, and sold in aid of the hospital, while the present work was illustrated in The Sphere. 6. Lavery actually gave the picture to his old friend Mrs Kerr Smiley of Drumalis, with the intention that it be raffled for funds to support the wounded; see 'By Private Wire', Belfast Newsletter, 3 July 1917, p. 5. The garden fete, scheduled for a few days earlier, had to be transferred indoors due to bad weather. 7. 'The Ulster Fete in London', Londonderry Sentinel, 5 July 1917, p. 2. Sir Edward Carson, whose portrait Lavery had recently painted along with that of John Redmond, delivered the opening speech. Imperialist sentiments prevailed. Carson used the occasion to praise his 'own boys' in their 'rush to the colours', while Lady Londonderry spoke of the Ulster Division's bravery as 'one more shot for the honour of Ulster and the Empire'. The amount raised on behalf of Lady Carson's fund 'to provide gifts for the sick, wounded and prisoners of war from the Ulster Division' was over £1000.
Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941) SWITZERLAND [HAZEL AND ALICE], 1913 oil on canvas signed lower left; signed, titled, dated and inscribed [Hazel and Alice] on reverse h:15 w:25 in. Provenance: George & Maura McClelland Collection; Private collection Exhibited: Dublin, Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Hunter Gatherer, The Collection of George and Maura McClelland, n.d. [2004], (exhibition catalogue by Catherine Marshall) Literature: The Hunter Gatherer, The Collection of George & Maura McClelland, Catherine Marshall, IMMA, Dublin, 2004, p.105 (illustrated) as Winter Sports, Switzerland, 1918 (1) In the summer of 1912 Lavery was commissioned to paint the British Royal Family at Buckingham Palace and sittings were booked in the King's and Queen's diaries for the following February (2). The arrangements meant that the painter's annual four month sojourn at his house in Tangier had to be abandoned and a shorter winter holiday substituted at Wengen in Switzerland. The added incentive was undoubtedly winter sports, coupled with the recent opening of the Jungfrau railway which had been under construction for nearly twenty years. Visitors could travel all the way to the summit, or stop at viewing platforms en route. The attraction was too great and in December the painter, his wife, Hazel, and step-daughter, Alice, checked in at the Hotel Regina Blümlisalp for a stay lasting until the end of January. The 'holiday' proved to be one of the most concentrated painting episodes of Lavery's life. The visual excitement was intense. Not since the late 1880s, when he painted studies of the Glasgow International Exhibition at Kelvingrove, was he so busy, and each day brought different challenges. Skaters, skiers, sledgers and curlers, 'downhill racers' and uphill Alpinists were painted along with dramatic landscapes of the Jungfrau, the 'Mönch' and other peaks from the respendent Lauterbrunnen valley range. The weather, especially when there had been an over-night snowfall, was challenging, not least when on one occasion at the end of the holiday the eight-year-old Alice was famously heard to complain to her mother, 'isn't it a pity we married an artist!' as they posed in what must have been freezing conditions (3). Lavery reported to his daughter, Eileen, that 'the snow is so soft, Alice rolls in it like a snowball' (4). The present canvas (fig 1) is one of four featuring Hazel and Alice. Two landscapes set mother and daughter emerging from woodland (figs 2&3). In both, the child is seen either sitting on or dragging her luge as in the present work. The third, Japanese Switzerland, (fig 3) presents the pair as silhouettes against a snowy hillside, its title clearly suggested by its similarity to Japanese prints (5). Although he never visited Japan, Lavery had collected Japanese fans and other artefacts in his youth and he clearly admired the abstracting processes adopted by the Ukioye masters - their simplifications of forms and space, allied to a heightened consciousness of shape that we find in the present canvas. As in Japanese Switzerland, figures perform in front of him, and his task is to capture the moment when shape alone gives solidity to form. Of the group, that simply entitled Switzerland, presents an additional unidentified woman, standing with Hazel on a hillside, as Alice brings up the rear. Alice's brilliant red costume is not without significance for Lavery reports that she had won first prize as 'a devil' in the hotel's costume ball wrapped no doubt in her mother's red coat, 'red stockings and red wig with horns …' (6) Hazel's companion is unidentified, but may well be Lady Violet Frances Mabel Mond (1867-1945), who with her husband Sir Alfred Mond, and daughter, Mary, were staying at the hotel. Mary, a playmate for Alice, was the subject of a little head study as well as The Skater, (Private Collection) in an 'action' tribute to her fearlessness on the ice. The latter work was purchased by her mother before they left to return to England (7). It is however, the remarkable spontaneity of the present canvas that makes it stand out among the Wengen group. Surveying the snowy landscape on a Swiss mountainside, according to the writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, makes 'the nerves to tighten and the mouth to smile' (8). Lavery would claim that experiences like this brought him to 'concert-pitch' and prepared him for the longeurs of portrait sittings in the London studio (9). They took him away from the plodding seriousness that face-painting had become in the hands of many of his contemporaries. However, as the present canvas indicates, such scenes were not merely a form of limbering up. These canvases stand alone and on their merits. Each reveals the unique qualities of the moment of realization. Not merely practice pieces, as vivid impressions, they charm the eye and for the style and spontaneity in Switzerland, there is nothing quite comparable. Kenneth McConkey 1. Erroneously dated 1918, this work dates from 1912-13. 2. Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, 2010, (Atelier Books, Edinburgh), pp. 119-123. 3. Quoted from unpublished ms, 1924 Diary (page for 2 Jan). Also quoted with minor variation in John Lavery, The Life of a Painter, 1940 (Cassel), p. 131. 4. Letter to Eileen, dated 19 January 1913, Private Collection. 5. Kenneth McConkey, Towards the Sun, The Artist Traveller at the turn of the Twentieth Century, 2021 (Paul Holberton Publishing), pp. 240-241. 6. Ibid. Mephistopheles, the Faustian demon, is traditionally represented in bright red costume and hat. 7. Lavery's The Skater: Miss Mary Mond was sold Christie's 19 May 2000. The Mond family returned to England on 19 January 1913. 8. RL Stevenson, 'Davos in Winter', Essays of Travel, 1912 (Chatto and Windus), p. 200; quoted in McConkey 2021, pp. 81-2. Lavery's snow scenes, particularly in the present example, recall the famous sequence in DH Lawrence's Women in Love (1920). Lawrence was of course traversing the Alps from Germany to Italy in 1912-13. 9. Lavery is likely to have borrowed the expression, 'concert pitch', and the idea of being in tune with nature, from Stevenson who uses it referring to young painters in Grez-sur-Loing during Lavery's first visit to the artists'colony; see 'Fontainebleau: Village Communities of Painters', The Magazine of Art, 1884, p. 343.
Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. 1856 - 1941 A Moorish Landscape - Evening signed J Lavery (lower right); signed John Lavery, titled, dated 1914 and inscribed with the artist's address (on the reverse) oil on canvasboard unframed: 25 by 35cm.; 10 by 14in. framed: 38.5 by 48 cm.; 15 by 19in. Executed in 1914.
Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. 1856 - 1941 Hampstead Heath signed J Lavery (lower right); also signed John Lavery, titled and dated 1921 and inscribed SNOW AND SLEET/ GUTTER SOUND/ ORKNEY/ 1916 (on the reverse) oil on board unframed: 63.5 by 76cm.; 25 by 30in. framed: 76.5 by 89cm.; 30 by 35in. Executed in 1921.
Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. 1856 - 1941 Portrait of Margaret Jean Fairlie Dunn signed J. Lavery and dated 89 (lower right) oil on canvas unframed: 46 by 36cm.; 18 by 14in. framed: 70.5 by 60.5cm.; 27¾ by 23¾in. Executed in 1889.
Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. 1856 - 1941 Mrs O'Sullivan and her Family signed J. Lavery (lower left); also signed, titled, inscribed KERRY and dated 1924 (on the reverse) oil on canvasboard unframed: 51 by 61cm.; 20 by 24in. framed: 65 by 75cm.; 25½ by 29½in. Executed in 1924.
Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.H.A., R.S.A. 1856 - 1941 Ariadne signed twice J Lavery (lower right) oil on canvas unframed: 174 by 113cm.; 68½ by 44½in. framed: 193 by 133.5cm.; 76 by 52½in.
Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. 1856 - 1941 A Moorish Harem signed J Lavery, inscribed FEZ and dated 1907 (lower right) oil on canvas unframed: 125 by 103.5cm.; 49½ by 40¾in. framed: 145 by 119.5cm.; 57 by 47in. Executed in 1907.
Sir John Lavery. 1917. "The East Wind". Large coastal scene with figures sunning on the beach. Signed lower right. Oil on board. Inscribed, dated, and signed on reverse along with small original inventory label with number "15119" and "cunn="(?). Sight: 25 x 30in. Overall: 33 x 38in.
Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941) HE WON'T BITE YOU watercolour signed and titled lower right; with artist's label on reverse; also with Fine Arts Society Ltd. [London] label on reverse h:14 w:20 in. Although its subject - an infant's cautious encounter with a curious dog in a Scottish garden - appears inconsequential at first, the watercolour, 'HE WON'T BITE YOU' gives us an early glimpse into the wealthy middle-class enclave of the Renfrewshire town of Paisley. Having exhibited at the town's Art Institute, John Lavery had recently secured the patronage of two of its most prominent citizens - James and Joseph Fulton, whose ancestors had introduced silk manufacture to Scotland in the eighteenth century. Modest beginnings grew into a major 'scouring' industry in the nineteenth century, in part due to the development of starch and dye stuffs that enabled the Fultons' father, William, to purchase a hillside estate adjacent to the town, known as The Glen. There, in 1859, he constructed a large 'Scottish baronial' pile, Glen House (1) which his son, James, filled with a formidable collection of French and Scottish paintings, 54 of which were donated to the Paisley Art Institute after his death (2). Then, in 1886, James's brother, Joseph, and sister-in-law, Elizabeth, commissioned Lavery to paint portraits of their daughters, the eldest of whom, Eva, also posed for the present watercolour (3). In return for his services, the painter was given free range of the estate and was offered Burn Cottage within walking distance of the house as a studio, while he worked on the portraits (4). With this as his base, Lavery painted a series of views of the nearby hills known as the Gleniffer Braes and part of the Fulton domain. Eva, with her shock of red hair, remained a favourite model and is likely to have posed for the girl in Convalescence 1885. While both house and cottage have been demolished, it is possible that the blossoming border with the 'burn' in the background is a continuation of that in the present work (5). A label fragment, preserved on the reverse of He won't bite you suggests that it is likely to have been shown at Lavery's first solo exhibition in Paisley (6). Thanks to the Fultons, the Coatses, the Smileys and Clarks, Paisley was booming in the 1880s, its factories supplying the empire, and Lavery, as he found his feet, received commissions from all four of its principal families. At this point, the painter, now approaching thirty, had returned from France, where the modern Naturalism of Bastien-Lepage held sway. Lavery was also aware of the growing public consciousness of the Impressionists, and watercolour at first seemed like a quick, convenient and translucent way of registering the passing scene. He won't bite you can therefore be comfortably placed within the Fulton suite of pictures when his use of the medium was at its height (7). Here, the soft colours of the hillside garden, overlooking the roofs and gables of the town are noteworthy, while uneven patches for grass in the foreground are reminiscent of the garden setting of On the Loing, An Afternoon Chat, 1884 (Ulster Museum, Belfast), that Lavery had brought back from Grez-sur-Loing, and recently shown at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts (8). While he made use of Burn Cottage, Lavery's main studio was in central Glasgow close to the Art Club, where his radical approach drew the attention of other young painters who became members of celebrated 'Glasgow Boys'. With Arthur Melville, James Guthrie, Edward Arthur Walton and Robert Macaulay Stevenson, Lavery was part of the inner circle, described by one of its members as a 'brotherhood'. Several Scots contemporaries, from 1886 onwards, adopted the idea of painting figures surrounded by blossoming trees. Outside this avant-garde circle, however, the Fultons were the first to recognise Lavery's abilities as the charming He won't bite you indicates. Prof Kenneth McConkey September 2023 1. Glen House was demolished sometime after Fulton's death in 1933, probably sometime in the 1960s. For further reference to Lavery's work at The Glen, see McConkey 2010, p. 31. Lavery painted the Fulton house and pond from a location close to his studio (Private Collection; see Hunt Museum, Limerick, Lavery & Osborne, Observing Life, 2019, exhibition catalogue, pp. 18-19). 2. The Fulton Bequest contains works by Courbet, Corot, Troyon and the Barbizon masters. 3. It also seems not unlikely that the infant, keeping well back from the straining border collie, is her younger sister, Alice. Lavery's portraits of Alice, 1886 and 1900 are in the Paisley Art Institute Collection, while an oil sketch inscribed to Alice, c. 1889 is in a private collection. James Fulton's portrait by Lavery is also part of the Art Institute bequest, as are views of the Gleniffer Braes. 4. Burn Cottage, renamed Lavery Cottage, fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1966 after its last occupant left. 5. McConkey, 2010, p. 32. Eva may also have modelled for one of the foreground spectators in The Tennis Party (Aberdeen Art Gallery). She later married Henry S Samuel, son of Sir Saul Samuel CB, KCMG, who had made a fortune mining for copper in New South Wales and was presented at court; see Portsmouth Evening News, 11 April 1895, p. 3. 6. Portraits, Pictures and Sketches painted in the Neighbourhood by John Lavery, opened at the Clark Hall, Paisley at the end of November 1886 and ran into the following month. 7. A reportedly 'heavily restored' oil version of the present subject passed through Phillips, London on 7 December 1991 as an 'attributed' work, and remains unlocated. Other watercolours, including the magisterial A Rally (Glasgow Museums), are known. 8. On the Loing, An Afternoon Chat was first shown at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in February1885, (no. 697), and later that year at Paisley Art Institute, 1885, (no. 276).
Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. 1856 - 1941 An Indian Lady (Madame Meta?) signed J Lavery (lower left) oil on canvas unframed: 61 by 51cm.; 24 by 20in. framed: 74 by 63cm.; 29 by 24¾in. Executed circa 1930s. __________________________________________________________________________ Sir John Lavery, R.A. 1856 - 1941 An Indian Lady (Madame Meta?) signé J Lavery (en bas à gauche) huile sur toile sans cadre: 61 by 51cm.; 24 by 20in. avec cadre: 74 by 63cm.; 29 by 24¾in. Executé au début des années 1930.
Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.H.A., R.S.A. 1856 - 1941 The Three Moors signed J Lavery (lower right) oil on canvasboard unframed: 25.5 by 35cm.; 10 by 13¾in. framed: 50.5 by 60cm.; 19¾ by 23½in. Executed circa 1907. __________________________________________________________________________ Sir John Lavery, R.A.,R.H.A., R.S.A. 1856 - 1941 The Three Moors signé J Lavery (en bas à droit) huile sur panneau toile sans cadre: 25.5 by 35cm.; 10 by 13¾in. avec cadre: 50.5 by 60cm.; 19¾ by 23½in. Exécuté vers 1907.
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