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Lot Essay
'From the start of his career, Lavery was fascinated by river scenes. His engagement with the Thames predates the Great War when he worked upon a large canvas of The Thames at Maidenhead (circa 1913, private collection), showing a langorous lady with a parasol in a punt on the river. A little later he painted the Thames at Sutton Courtenay in a similar vein (Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin) and after the war there were occasional forays to Taplow, Maidenhead and other riverside haunts.
Having produced suites of racing pictures and country house interiors in the twenties, Lavery returned to the river to visit the regattas in the summer of 1934, in brief periods of respite during Hazel Lavery's last illness. Such an occasion is represented in the present work. The picture is closely allied to Maidenhead Regatta (1932), which was shown at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts in 1936 (472) and donated by the artist to Glasgow Art Gallery the following year. A number of studies of figures lounging in pleasure boats, now in private collections, relate either to the Glasgow picture or to a proposed larger version of the present work. The present work is clearly separated from that in Glasgow by its scale and degree of finish. Here, even in old age, we see no diminution of Lavery's power to respond to the visual chaos of a great public occasion. The vivid shorthand notation used to such effect in The Skater (lot 54) is employed upon athletic young men sporting themselves with fashionable women.
Henley Regatta was first established in 1839 when the town council decided to formalise the rowing competitions which were already taking place between Oxford and Cambridge eights on Henley Reach. The event which was scheduled for the beginning of July each year, only became a popular attraction in the 1880s, by which time pleasure boating on the Thames in the Maidenhead area had become a craze - as is clear from E.J. Gregory's Boulter Lock, Sunday Afternoon (1897, Lady Lever Art Gallery) and from Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (1889). The Regatta, with its Challenge Cups, was the annual focus of this activity, attracting not only the social elite but, like the Derby, a wide range of cockney hawkers and street vendors. Its place in what became known as the London Season, originates in the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales in Queen Victoria's Jubilee year, 1887. Thereafter, as at Ascot, special enclosures were reserved for the most prominent members of London society. The Regatta revived in the years following the Great War and by the early thirties had returned to its former glory - as is clear from Lavery's sketch'.
(Kenneth McConkey, private correspondence, April 2000).
Major Tommy Bouch, the first owner of this work, was Master of the Belvoir Hunt. He was a patron of the artist, Sir Alfred Munnings, and commissioned Munnings in 1920 to paint a series of 'behind-the-hunt' pictures of the horses and hounds at Belvoir, near Grantham. These works were subsequently seen in Munnings's Pictures of the Belvoir Hunt and Other Scenes of English Country Life at the Alpine Club Gallery in April 1921, the exhibition which effectively lauched the artist's career as a painter of high society. Munnings's reminiscences of the colourful Major are recorded in the second volume of his autobiography, The Second Burst, Suffolk, 1951, pp. 68-78.
Major Herbert Dunsmuir was born in Glasgow in the 1890s, where his father had founded the marine engineering business of Dunsmuir & Jackson on the Clyde. Educated at Glenalmond, he served with the Highland Light Infantry during the First World War. Thereafter he moved to South West Scotland and his lifetime of collecting began. His eye was akin to other astute Scottish collectors of the period, notably Sir William Burrell, and, like them, he benefitted from the outstanding Glaswegian dealers as well as their London counterparts. His taste emcompassed the Glasgow Boys, the Barbizon school, Impressionism and the Scottish colourists. Like Major Tommy Bouch, the previous owner of this work, he also greatly admired the paintings of Sir Alfred Munnings.
Having produced suites of racing pictures and country house interiors in the twenties, Lavery returned to the river to visit the regattas in the summer of 1934, in brief periods of respite during Hazel Lavery's last illness. Such an occasion is represented in the present work. The picture is closely allied to Maidenhead Regatta (1932), which was shown at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts in 1936 (472) and donated by the artist to Glasgow Art Gallery the following year. A number of studies of figures lounging in pleasure boats, now in private collections, relate either to the Glasgow picture or to a proposed larger version of the present work. The present work is clearly separated from that in Glasgow by its scale and degree of finish. Here, even in old age, we see no diminution of Lavery's power to respond to the visual chaos of a great public occasion. The vivid shorthand notation used to such effect in The Skater (lot 54) is employed upon athletic young men sporting themselves with fashionable women.
Henley Regatta was first established in 1839 when the town council decided to formalise the rowing competitions which were already taking place between Oxford and Cambridge eights on Henley Reach. The event which was scheduled for the beginning of July each year, only became a popular attraction in the 1880s, by which time pleasure boating on the Thames in the Maidenhead area had become a craze - as is clear from E.J. Gregory's Boulter Lock, Sunday Afternoon (1897, Lady Lever Art Gallery) and from Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (1889). The Regatta, with its Challenge Cups, was the annual focus of this activity, attracting not only the social elite but, like the Derby, a wide range of cockney hawkers and street vendors. Its place in what became known as the London Season, originates in the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales in Queen Victoria's Jubilee year, 1887. Thereafter, as at Ascot, special enclosures were reserved for the most prominent members of London society. The Regatta revived in the years following the Great War and by the early thirties had returned to its former glory - as is clear from Lavery's sketch'.
(Kenneth McConkey, private correspondence, April 2000).
Major Tommy Bouch, the first owner of this work, was Master of the Belvoir Hunt. He was a patron of the artist, Sir Alfred Munnings, and commissioned Munnings in 1920 to paint a series of 'behind-the-hunt' pictures of the horses and hounds at Belvoir, near Grantham. These works were subsequently seen in Munnings's Pictures of the Belvoir Hunt and Other Scenes of English Country Life at the Alpine Club Gallery in April 1921, the exhibition which effectively lauched the artist's career as a painter of high society. Munnings's reminiscences of the colourful Major are recorded in the second volume of his autobiography, The Second Burst, Suffolk, 1951, pp. 68-78.
Major Herbert Dunsmuir was born in Glasgow in the 1890s, where his father had founded the marine engineering business of Dunsmuir & Jackson on the Clyde. Educated at Glenalmond, he served with the Highland Light Infantry during the First World War. Thereafter he moved to South West Scotland and his lifetime of collecting began. His eye was akin to other astute Scottish collectors of the period, notably Sir William Burrell, and, like them, he benefitted from the outstanding Glaswegian dealers as well as their London counterparts. His taste emcompassed the Glasgow Boys, the Barbizon school, Impressionism and the Scottish colourists. Like Major Tommy Bouch, the previous owner of this work, he also greatly admired the paintings of Sir Alfred Munnings.