SIR JOHN LAVERY, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. (1856-1941)
SIR JOHN LAVERY, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. (1856-1941)
SIR JOHN LAVERY, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. (1856-1941)
2 More
This lot has been imported from outside of the UK … Read more
SIR JOHN LAVERY, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. (1856-1941)

On The Sands

Details
SIR JOHN LAVERY, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. (1856-1941)
On The Sands
signed 'J Lavery' (lower right), signed again and inscribed 'On the Sands/John Lavery' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas board
10 x 14 in. (25.4 x 35.5 cm.)
Painted circa 1910.
Provenance
with W. Scott & Sons, Montreal, where purchased by the present owner's grandfather in January 1912 as 'Tangier Shore', and by descent.
Special notice
This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.

Brought to you by

Alice Murray
Alice Murray Head of Evening Sale

Lot Essay

Sir John Lavery’s first visit to Tangier was in 1891, with his friends, the Glasgow artists Arthur Melville and Joseph Crawhall. Lavery made almost annual visits thereafter, and by the turn of the century had acquired a house within walking distance of the sea.

Painted circa 1910, On The Sands has remained within the same family collection for over one hundred years. Set on the beach that stretches in a long curve to the east of the city, two elegant figures and a young girl shelter under a purple parasol, gazing across the sand and out to sea. Further down the beach are two more strolling figures and, at the waterline, a muleteer cools his animals in the gentle surf. Lavery delights in the shifting colours of the water; ochre with churned sand near the shore, and turning turquoise, green and finally deep violet in the far horizon, where a passing steamer sends a puff of smoke into the clear sky. The figures were likely painted from the artist’s regular model Mary Auras and his daughter Eileen, who was twenty at the time.

Beaches and the sea - whether in Morocco, the South of France, or Scotland, were always an abiding love of Lavery’s, reflecting the interest in water and passing weather effects of his supporter James McNeill Whistler. Professor Kenneth McConkey remarks on Lavery’s paintings in Tangier around 1910: ‘The bright sandy foreground and humid sky convey the unmistakeable atmosphere of the southern Mediterranean coast. Clearly Lavery was influenced by Whistler, and of whose beach scene, Blue and Silver, Trouville, 1965, had been shown at the International Society in 1899, but in these later works the colour intensity which this coastline demanded in its freshness of hue, conveyed heat and humidity which Whistler never experienced’ (K. McKonkey, Sir John Lavery, 1993, Edinburgh, p. 95).

We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.

More from Modern British & Irish Art Day Sale

View All
View All