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Lot Essay
At the end of November 1928, Sir John Lavery, his wife Hazel, and stepdaughter, Alice, left London for L’Enchantment, a villa near the hilltop village of Mougins in the south of France, let to them for the winter months by Mrs Benjamin Guinness. Although Lady Lavery disapproved of the rusticity of what had been an old farmhouse, the athletic Alice, now in her mid-twenties, turned her attention to a young chestnut pony in the nearby fields. Being close to Cannes, and keen for her daughter to receive tennis tuition from top professionals, much of their time was spent at the celebrated courts of the Hotel Beau Site, where Lavery painted under the orange trees (K. McConkey, exhibition catalogue, Lavery on Location, Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, pp. 194-5). There was more than a chill in the air in the early weeks of the new year and when two major works, Les Salons Privés, Monte Carlo and Tennis at Cannes (both private collections), were completed and the weather had improved, the artist turned to other subjects. One of these was the present oil sketch for Schooling the Pony, a composition he decided to enlarge for the forthcoming Royal Academy exhibition, now in the collection of Touchstones, Rochdale (Rochdale Art Gallery).
On this bright winter day, all the immediate thrill of the moment when the picture first appeared as a sketch in tone and colour, was obvious. The present vivid sketch is the more finished of two ébauches. When sold in 2002, it was not possible to be definitive on the identities of both figure and location. The possibility exists that the horse was a Palomino – a breed fashionable at the period, and later brought to fame in the mid-1930s to 1950s when Roy Rogers starred in Hollywood movies with his beautiful Palomino, ‘Trigger’.
Unlike the Rochdale canvas, horse and trainer are likely to have been painted from life, with the swift indication of a neighbouring villa in the distance. The ‘perfectly delightful open air action picture’ was ‘painted somewhere in France’, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post (4 May 1929, p. 9). Possibly taking his cue from the artist, the critic declared Les Salons Privés, Monte Carlo, ‘greatly inferior’ to Schooling the Pony. As the horse circled at the end of its rope, this landscape was altered to include the hilltop village. The brief indication of the figure in full sunlight was translated into the more studied contre-jour pose in the exhibited version. For several critics, visiting the Academy, this simple subject was preferred to the more elaborate Monte Carlo interior.
Lavery was then persuaded to exhibit a collection of recent sketches at Colnaghi’s in Bond Street in 1932, in which the present work was shown, along with eighty others, half of which related to his recent Buckingham Palace painting. The whole group was to be sold to support the Artists’ General Benevolent Fund, the present sketch being one of the more expensive at 50 gns.
The Scotsman summed up the great variety of subjects on display in the second half of the show, declaring that these ‘dashing’ works were ‘far more interesting artistically than the completed pictures …’ to which they referred. Its correspondent concluded that, 'The real energy of draughtsmanship and force of colour in Lavery’s art to be seen not in large Academy pieces but in his rapid notes' (‘Lavery’s Portrait Sketches’, The Scotsman, 30 May 1932, p. 13).
The present sketch, however, proved prophetic. Alice, now in her mid-twenties, had fallen for Jack McEnery, an Irish farmer, horse trainer and owner of Rossenarra stud at Kilmoganny in county Kilkenny - to whom she was engaged when the present picture was painted. To the disapproval of her mother, the following March the couple were married at Cannes. Alice and her husband then ran the stud producing numerous thoroughbreds, and under her son, Martyn, Red Rum, the great Irish steeplechaser, and winner of three Grand Nationals in the mid-1970s, was trained.
We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for preparing this catalogue entry.
On this bright winter day, all the immediate thrill of the moment when the picture first appeared as a sketch in tone and colour, was obvious. The present vivid sketch is the more finished of two ébauches. When sold in 2002, it was not possible to be definitive on the identities of both figure and location. The possibility exists that the horse was a Palomino – a breed fashionable at the period, and later brought to fame in the mid-1930s to 1950s when Roy Rogers starred in Hollywood movies with his beautiful Palomino, ‘Trigger’.
Unlike the Rochdale canvas, horse and trainer are likely to have been painted from life, with the swift indication of a neighbouring villa in the distance. The ‘perfectly delightful open air action picture’ was ‘painted somewhere in France’, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post (4 May 1929, p. 9). Possibly taking his cue from the artist, the critic declared Les Salons Privés, Monte Carlo, ‘greatly inferior’ to Schooling the Pony. As the horse circled at the end of its rope, this landscape was altered to include the hilltop village. The brief indication of the figure in full sunlight was translated into the more studied contre-jour pose in the exhibited version. For several critics, visiting the Academy, this simple subject was preferred to the more elaborate Monte Carlo interior.
Lavery was then persuaded to exhibit a collection of recent sketches at Colnaghi’s in Bond Street in 1932, in which the present work was shown, along with eighty others, half of which related to his recent Buckingham Palace painting. The whole group was to be sold to support the Artists’ General Benevolent Fund, the present sketch being one of the more expensive at 50 gns.
The Scotsman summed up the great variety of subjects on display in the second half of the show, declaring that these ‘dashing’ works were ‘far more interesting artistically than the completed pictures …’ to which they referred. Its correspondent concluded that, 'The real energy of draughtsmanship and force of colour in Lavery’s art to be seen not in large Academy pieces but in his rapid notes' (‘Lavery’s Portrait Sketches’, The Scotsman, 30 May 1932, p. 13).
The present sketch, however, proved prophetic. Alice, now in her mid-twenties, had fallen for Jack McEnery, an Irish farmer, horse trainer and owner of Rossenarra stud at Kilmoganny in county Kilkenny - to whom she was engaged when the present picture was painted. To the disapproval of her mother, the following March the couple were married at Cannes. Alice and her husband then ran the stud producing numerous thoroughbreds, and under her son, Martyn, Red Rum, the great Irish steeplechaser, and winner of three Grand Nationals in the mid-1970s, was trained.
We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for preparing this catalogue entry.