British and Irish Art Articles

By Lara Grieve

Sir John Lavery, R.S.A., R.A., R.H.A. (1856-1941)
The Spanish Dancer
signed 'J. Lavery' (lower right)
oil on canvas-board
9 x 5½ in. (22.9 x 14 cm.)
Sold for £24,000
London, May 2006



Sir John Lavery, R.S.A., R.H.A., R.A. (1856-1941)
The Honeymoon
signed 'J Lavery' (lower right), signed, inscribed and dated 'THE RIVIERA/THE HONEY-MOON./BY JOHN LAVERY/1921' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
37 x 28 in. (94 x 71 cm.)
Sold for £915,200
London, May 2006



Sir John Lavery, R.H.A., R.A., R.S.A. (1856-1941)
North Berwick No. 3
signed 'J Lavery' (lower left) and signed again, inscribed and dated 'NORTH BERWICK NO 3/BY/JOHN LAVERY/1921.' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
25 x 30 in. (63.5 x 76.2 cm.)
Sold for £54,000
London, May 2006

At the start of the October Revolution, when his 12-year-old son was attacked by a mutinous Russian sailor, Ossian Donner decided that he and his family would have to leave his native Finland. An industrialist with known nationalist sympathies, he feared for their lives. His wife, a feisty Edinburgh woman, argued their way past the Red Guards using false British passports, supplied obligingly, by the British Consul in Helsinki.

On arrival in London, the Donners immediately began fund-raising for the cause of liberating Finland from Russia, which, in the closing months of the Great War, was no easy task. However, after the successful campaign fought by General Mannerheim, the fledgling free Finland appointed Donner as its ambassador to the Court of St James and as its envoy to the League of Nations.

This is the man who nonchalantly sits reading on a terrace overlooking the Baie des Anges in Sir John Lavery's The Honeymoon, one of an interesting group of paintings in the Tenth Anniversary Irish Sale. The 'honeymoon' in the early months of 1921 is a moment of peace not just for the Donners.

Lavery, recently knighted by Lloyd George for his services as Official War Artist, would soon commence his series of portraits of Irish liberation fighters, leading to the commemorative canvas depicting the Ratification of the Irish Treaty in the British Parliament in December. Ireland and Finland were comparable ex-colonies seeking independence. But this lay in the immediate future.

Other paintings indicate the range of Lavery's travels during the previous 30 years. In the early 1890s, for instance, he had been one of the few British painters to journey through Carlist Spain. Here too was an empire in decay, but its attraction for travellers lay in picturesque rituals - the corrida and the flamenco. In 1892, the artist-reporter stationed himself in the gallery of a theatre to record the latter and the resulting vivid little sketch has all the immediacy of lived experience.

Lavery's Sevillean forays were sometimes added to regular visits to his favourite haunt-Tangier. Having made three trips in quick succession in the early nineties, he re-established contact with the city after 1903.

Captivated by the dazzling coastline, by the cluster of white buildings which formed its profile, by the dusty market place, the secret streets and rooftop music and dancing, Lavery distilled his encounters into a series of classic compositions.

The small panel, Three Moors, is one of the most satisfying treatments of this subject. Like Monet, Whistler and many others, Lavery saw the symbolist inferences of figures in such a setting -placed before the tremulous cadences of the ocean, in front of the immensity of space.

By 1921, the era of the 'long-weekend' country-house party had begun, and for the Laverys this meant train journeys to North Berwick; the Riviera had replaced Tangier and throughout the Twenties, on regular visits, the artist glimpsed the privileged set, vividly portrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Honeymoon anticipates the influx that the inauguration of the train bleu in 1922 would produce-a world of lotus-eaters for whom nothing really mattered. We are almost there in the painting. But the two figures have not divested. Mrs Donner's hat shields her complexion from the rays. Sun tan is not yet a fashionable signal of bonhommie, and the splendid scene before them, the matchless contour of the côte d'azure, for all their apparent indifference, remains a thing of great beauty.

Professor Kenneth McConkey is author of Sir John Lavery (1993).

Article appeared in the May/June 2006 issue of Christie's Magazine