The Garden, Cap d'Ail

'During the early months of 1921 the Laverys took an extended holiday journeying along the Riviera, between Cap Ferrat and Monaco. As was his custom, Lavery treated these sojourns in fashionable watering-holes as opportunities to produce new work. On this occasion he painted a series of extraordinary pictures, notable for what might be described as an almost Post-Impressionist palette. The intense blues of Beaulieu and the Blue Bay greatly appealed to him and in The Terrace, Cap d'Ail (private collection, see K. McConkey, Sir John Lavery, Edinburgh, 1993, p. 144) he produced what must be the definitive evocation of the cote d'azure. At some point, the painter also visited the hill gardens around Villa Sylvia, probably taking a path at the back of the hotel, since the configuration of headland in the present work exactly replicates that in The Terrace, Cap d'Ail. The lush vegetation of the area - the aloes growing by the roadside - even at that time of year, greatly impressed him. He observed scarlet and cobalt mingling in the shadows, and warm browns in the foliage - all of which are clearly seen in The Garden, Cap d'Ail. The figure in the middle distance is likely to be the artist's sixteen year old stepdaughter, Alice.'
(Kenneth McConkey, private correspondence, April 2000).