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Lot Essay
In 1879 a naval captain named Beddoes walked into Lavery's studio in Glasgow and asked the painter to give him painting lessons at Belmullet, County Mayo, where he was currently stationed. Lavery rose to the challenge and made his first trip to the West of Ireland, a landscape which, in his autobiography, he describes as 'desolate'. He records that when he arrived at Beddoes' house it seemed like 'the acme of comfort' after what was a harrowing trip of thirty or fourty miles in a jaunting car. Lavery was deeply affected by the poverty of the Irish peasants and on one occasion attempted to paint a peasant woman on a roadway. He records that when he gave her a two-shilling piece for posing, she turned it over and over in her hand thinking that it was a foreign coin. (J. Lavery, The Life of the Painter, 1940, p. 199-200; Kenneth McConkey Sir John Lavery, Edinburgh, 1993, pp. 17-18).
Since the present work bears a signature, bottom right which also incorporates Captain Beddoes name, it is safe to assume that the present work was purchased from Lavery by him sometime around 1880-81. This signature is not in Lavery's hand and therefore we must conclude that it was added by the Captain in 1882 when he cut down the picture to make it fit its present frame. It seems likely that, as a keen amateur he retouched the upper portions in the background obliterating the original Lavery signature, which continues however to be discernable underneath the paint surface, top left. The main elements of the painting, the head and shoulders of the girl, a familiar Lavery model of the period, are clearly autograph and have not been subject to retouching by Beddoes. The suggestion in the title that this was a Parisian girl cannot be confirmed although around this period Lavery was attending the atelier Julian.
We are grateful to Mr Kenneth McConkey for preparing this catalogue entry.
Since the present work bears a signature, bottom right which also incorporates Captain Beddoes name, it is safe to assume that the present work was purchased from Lavery by him sometime around 1880-81. This signature is not in Lavery's hand and therefore we must conclude that it was added by the Captain in 1882 when he cut down the picture to make it fit its present frame. It seems likely that, as a keen amateur he retouched the upper portions in the background obliterating the original Lavery signature, which continues however to be discernable underneath the paint surface, top left. The main elements of the painting, the head and shoulders of the girl, a familiar Lavery model of the period, are clearly autograph and have not been subject to retouching by Beddoes. The suggestion in the title that this was a Parisian girl cannot be confirmed although around this period Lavery was attending the atelier Julian.
We are grateful to Mr Kenneth McConkey for preparing this catalogue entry.