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Lot Essay
At the end of the first week of January 1891, Lavery set sail from Tilbury for Tangier. In so doing, he was following an artistic trade route. Even though it lay to the west of the Greenwich meridian, for artists, the city known as ‘La Blanca’ was an instant Orient. It had already captured the imagination of fellow Glasgow School painters, Joseph Crawhall and Arthur Melville both of whom were particular friends.1 When he travelled down from Glasgow to board ship, Lavery actually stayed a couple of nights with Melville, who had recently returned from a tour of southern Spain that is likely to have begun in the Moroccan port. 2 There was, as yet, no Baedeker for Morocco, yet the painter embarked with an ample store of friendly advice. It could not however prepare him for a city culture that was almost medieval. He was of course, captivated, to the extent that he would eventually establish a studio there.
This first trip was, however, a reconnaissance. The city was surveyed from the rooftop of the Continental Hotel and sketches were made in the souk and the Kasbah. On one memorable occasion he stood in the crowd watching snake charmers.3 At least four of these Tangier sketches represented the streets leading to the gates of the old walled city, one of which, the newly discovered El Asha (currently transliterated as Bab al Assa) is represented here. Known as the ‘Gate of Beatings’, it was so called because prisoners were lashed as they passed through it en route to the nearby prison which Lavery also painted circa 1905. The gate marks the south-eastern end of the Kasbah and leads into the modern Place du Mechouar.
On Lavery’s return to London later that Spring his sketches were deposited at the Goupil Gallery, in preparation for a solo exhibition scheduled for June. Reviewers, who also visited his State Visit of Queen Victoria to the International Exhibition, Glasgow, 1888, 1890 (Glasgow Museums), currently on display nearby at MacLean’s Gallery in Haymarket, had the opportunity to survey examples of all of his recent work. The Athenaeum for instance, found ‘an extremely clever somewhat feverish and voluptuous sort of impressionism’ in his Goupil show, while for The Saturday Review the Tangier pictures were simply ‘impressions of brilliant sunshine or moonlight on white walls’.4 Lavery eschewed ‘“subject” in the ordinary sense of the term’ – in other words, the ‘artist-reporter’ could work just as satisfactorily in the grand soko as in the Grand Hall of the Glasgow International Exhibition.
As with those earlier studies (see lot 6), spontaneity is the hallmark of Lavery’s attack. One has to imagine him in situ, marshalling the composition, finding its focal point, and, in the present instance, taking the eye to a gateway partially obscured by tethered donkeys, the principal mode of transport within the narrow streets of the walled city. Their Berber and Riffian keepers, according to Cunninghame Graham (see lot 30), ‘flitted to and fro, silent as shadows with their slippered feet … they seemed like a population of uncloistered friars’.5 This was the essence of Lavery’s impression. Figures pass by and the street empties to reveal what one critic described as ‘tawdry beauty’.6
Lavery’s work is however, best summed up by Jean Macaulay Stevenson, the wife of the artist’s close friend, Robert Macaulay Stevenson, in notes on an article she hoped to publish as part of a study of current Glasgow School painters. ‘His whole regard of life is debonair’, she wrote, and ‘his work is expressive of his nature. He has much more in common with French or French-trained work … than that of these serious Scotsmen’.7
KMc.
1 Crawhall, along with Robert Macaulay Stevenson, had been a witness at Lavery’s marriage in the previous year, in precise circumstances that remain obscure, and Lavery in turn, had stood in as Best Man for Stevenson in July 1890, when Melville failed to return from Spain in time for his wedding.
2 Ronald Pickvance and Kenneth McConkey, ‘Arthur Melville and the Macaulay Stevensons – A Friendship Rediscovered’, British Art Journal, vol XVI, no. 3, Winter 2015-6, pp. 50-1 (letter 25).
3 McConkey 2010, pp. 54-6.
4 The Athenaeum, 13 June 1891, pp. 772-3; The Saturday Review, 20 June 1891, pp. 742-3.
5 RB Cunninghame Graham, ‘Introduction?’, Catalogue of an Exhibition of Cabinet Pictures by John Lavery … 1904 (London, Leicester Galleries), p. 7.
6 See note 4
7 Jean Macaulay Stevenson, unpublished ms., 1891, Private Collection.
This first trip was, however, a reconnaissance. The city was surveyed from the rooftop of the Continental Hotel and sketches were made in the souk and the Kasbah. On one memorable occasion he stood in the crowd watching snake charmers.3 At least four of these Tangier sketches represented the streets leading to the gates of the old walled city, one of which, the newly discovered El Asha (currently transliterated as Bab al Assa) is represented here. Known as the ‘Gate of Beatings’, it was so called because prisoners were lashed as they passed through it en route to the nearby prison which Lavery also painted circa 1905. The gate marks the south-eastern end of the Kasbah and leads into the modern Place du Mechouar.
On Lavery’s return to London later that Spring his sketches were deposited at the Goupil Gallery, in preparation for a solo exhibition scheduled for June. Reviewers, who also visited his State Visit of Queen Victoria to the International Exhibition, Glasgow, 1888, 1890 (Glasgow Museums), currently on display nearby at MacLean’s Gallery in Haymarket, had the opportunity to survey examples of all of his recent work. The Athenaeum for instance, found ‘an extremely clever somewhat feverish and voluptuous sort of impressionism’ in his Goupil show, while for The Saturday Review the Tangier pictures were simply ‘impressions of brilliant sunshine or moonlight on white walls’.4 Lavery eschewed ‘“subject” in the ordinary sense of the term’ – in other words, the ‘artist-reporter’ could work just as satisfactorily in the grand soko as in the Grand Hall of the Glasgow International Exhibition.
As with those earlier studies (see lot 6), spontaneity is the hallmark of Lavery’s attack. One has to imagine him in situ, marshalling the composition, finding its focal point, and, in the present instance, taking the eye to a gateway partially obscured by tethered donkeys, the principal mode of transport within the narrow streets of the walled city. Their Berber and Riffian keepers, according to Cunninghame Graham (see lot 30), ‘flitted to and fro, silent as shadows with their slippered feet … they seemed like a population of uncloistered friars’.5 This was the essence of Lavery’s impression. Figures pass by and the street empties to reveal what one critic described as ‘tawdry beauty’.6
Lavery’s work is however, best summed up by Jean Macaulay Stevenson, the wife of the artist’s close friend, Robert Macaulay Stevenson, in notes on an article she hoped to publish as part of a study of current Glasgow School painters. ‘His whole regard of life is debonair’, she wrote, and ‘his work is expressive of his nature. He has much more in common with French or French-trained work … than that of these serious Scotsmen’.7
KMc.
1 Crawhall, along with Robert Macaulay Stevenson, had been a witness at Lavery’s marriage in the previous year, in precise circumstances that remain obscure, and Lavery in turn, had stood in as Best Man for Stevenson in July 1890, when Melville failed to return from Spain in time for his wedding.
2 Ronald Pickvance and Kenneth McConkey, ‘Arthur Melville and the Macaulay Stevensons – A Friendship Rediscovered’, British Art Journal, vol XVI, no. 3, Winter 2015-6, pp. 50-1 (letter 25).
3 McConkey 2010, pp. 54-6.
4 The Athenaeum, 13 June 1891, pp. 772-3; The Saturday Review, 20 June 1891, pp. 742-3.
5 RB Cunninghame Graham, ‘Introduction?’, Catalogue of an Exhibition of Cabinet Pictures by John Lavery … 1904 (London, Leicester Galleries), p. 7.
6 See note 4
7 Jean Macaulay Stevenson, unpublished ms., 1891, Private Collection.