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Lot Essay
During the winter of 1920-21, the Laverys cruised the coast of North Africa before meeting Winston Churchill, Patrick Donner and other friends on the Riviera in the early months of the new year. Instantly the painter who had recorded the final stages of colonialism and orientalism in Morocco, slipped seamlessly into a new phenomenon - that of wealthy hedonists indulging in what was to become the world's playground. In The Honeymoon (fig. 1, sold Christie's, London, 12 May 2006, lot 100) he intuitively grasped the mood of this new era, yet to be described in the novels of Scott Fitzgerald.1
At first however, the beautiful coastline of southern France with its promise of endless summer, captured his attention. In 1921 the incomparable view of Beaulieu and the Baie des Anges from the promontory of Cap Ferrat were enough in themselves to usher in the Jazz Age.2 One of these scenes is dramatically captured in The Little White Boats. Here sunlight creeps across the entrance to a cave in the distant chalk cliffs. Looking down into the depths of the still sea, the painter observes the reflection of overhead clouds and notices that far below the rooftop where he stands, two small dinghies are moored. Lavery almost overhangs the translucent surface on which they sit. Painting them, he must have been reminded of his own recent exploits in portraying North Sea convoys from kite balloons in the last year of the war.
The Little White Boats is one of the most striking abstract arrangements Lavery conceived. For a painter schooled in the admiration of Japanese prints, who was keenly aware of the possibilities of photography, this work provides evidence of an eye undimmed by inherited landscape conventions. It appears to be breathed on to the canvas without correction, in a single setting. The dexterity of brushstrokes describing the inlets of the bay is masterly and it fully justifies the enthusiastic comments of Winston Churchill in his introduction to the catalogue of the Alpine Club Gallery show in 1921. Churchill wrote that sunlight, 'gay and pellucid and pleasurable on the Riviera' had been expressed 'in brilliant and beautiful colour with the ease of long mastery'.3
1 See for instance R. Kanigel, High season, How one Riviera Town has seduced Travellers for Two Thousand Years, New York, 2002.
2 Lavery is known to have worked at the Villa Sylvia on Cap Ferrat during this holiday.
3 The Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill, P.C., M.P., exhibition catalogue, Pictures of Morocco, The Riviera and other Scenes by Sir John Lavery R.A.: Portrait and Child Studies by Lady Lavery, London, Alpine Club Gallery, 1921, pp. 3-4.
We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for providing the catalogue entry for this lot.
At first however, the beautiful coastline of southern France with its promise of endless summer, captured his attention. In 1921 the incomparable view of Beaulieu and the Baie des Anges from the promontory of Cap Ferrat were enough in themselves to usher in the Jazz Age.
The Little White Boats is one of the most striking abstract arrangements Lavery conceived. For a painter schooled in the admiration of Japanese prints, who was keenly aware of the possibilities of photography, this work provides evidence of an eye undimmed by inherited landscape conventions. It appears to be breathed on to the canvas without correction, in a single setting. The dexterity of brushstrokes describing the inlets of the bay is masterly and it fully justifies the enthusiastic comments of Winston Churchill in his introduction to the catalogue of the Alpine Club Gallery show in 1921. Churchill wrote that sunlight, 'gay and pellucid and pleasurable on the Riviera' had been expressed 'in brilliant and beautiful colour with the ease of long mastery'.
We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for providing the catalogue entry for this lot.