Miss Katherine McLaren at Glencarron

During 1891, Lavery basked in the reflected glory from the success of his celebrated canvas commemorating the State Visit of Queen Victoria to the International Exhibition, Glasgow, 1888, (Glasgow City Art Gallery) completed at the end of the preceeding year. As a self-appointed artist-in-residence he had produced over fifty small studies of all aspects of the International before securing this important commission. While the painting of the Queen's visit was the property of Glasgow City Council, the perspicacious painter had secured the right to exhibit it and claim the proceeds for one year after its completion. The picture was shown in London in 1891, to coincide with Lavery's equally successful solo exhibition at the Goupil Gallery - a show that contained the fruits of his first visit to Tangier. In 1890, the west of Scotland plutocracy lionized him in anticipation of his success. For the Paisley patrons, he painted Yacht Racing on the Clyde and executed the panoramic Croquet, 1890 (private collection), as a companion to the The Tennis Party, 1885 (Aberdeen Art Gallery).1 The following summer of 1891, he continued combining portraits with swift sketches of recreational pursuits - this time in the Highlands.

Although the terms of Lavery's commission remain obscure, the large portrait of Katherine and Esther McLaren, the Daughters of Lord McLaren, his major exhibit at the Royal Academy of 1892 is likely to have been initiated in conversations at Glencarron House in Rossshire. 2 Here the painter executed a series of sketches intended as 'The Gun Room Collection' in the palatial shooting lodge which the McLarens rented every year as a summer retreat. These depicted the surrounding estate, an area of great natural beauty, as well as family picnics and, in the present instance, a lively sketch of Katherine McLaren. This was a kind of limbering up for the Academy portrait. Katherine and Esther were two of the five children of John McLaren, Lord McLaren, and his wife, Ottilie Augusta Schwabe. Like his father, Lord McLaren was a lawyer who held the posts of Lord Advocate, and Deputy Lieutenant for Edinburgh, Midlothian. 3 Katherine (circa 1870-1966) the oldest of three daughters, married the lawyer, historian and businessman, Frederick Scott Oliver in March 1893.4

In 1903, Oliver commissioned Charles Wellington Furse to paint his wife and children in what was to be one of Furse's last group portraits. Katherine passed on her great interest in art to her son, Mark Oliver. 5

The McLaren suite of portraits represents a subtle, yet important shift in Lavery's patronage. As a 'Glasgow Boy', his clients came for the most part, from the west of Scotland. In commissioning Lavery, Lord McLaren not only demonstrated radical tastes, but he also departed from convention which, a few years earlier, would have led him to the Royal Scottish Academy, and into the clutches of Sir George Reid, its staid President.6 Voiced in 1892, Reid's hostility to Impressionism was, in essence, a way of hitting out at the successful young Glasgow painters who had been taken up in Munich and were currently being fêted at the Paris Salon. Resistance by the Edinburgh art establishment undoubtedly weakened when Lord McLaren selected Lavery. Although within three years the painter was voted into the Royal Scottish Academy, he waited a further sixteen for similar acknowledgement in London.

Painted on the spot, the portrait of Katie McLaren demonstrates the spontaneity of Lavery's handling. The Glasgow International and Tangier enterprises had tested his ability to paint in potentially difficult circumstances, and initially his handling was tentative. By the summer of 1891 however, he was deploying 'fatter', more oily pigment which could be scraped down to give a background tone. On this base the figure is placed with great confidence. Lavery swiftly deals with the structural complexity of the deck-chair and deftly indicates the landscape and gleaming river behind the sitter. Details such as the tartan scarf, are touched in, thought not slavishly copied, and with a few strokes he catches the reader's concentration, the fall of her fashionable feather boa, and the pale tones of the surrounding landscape. Judging from the dedication - 'with many thanks to the original' - Katherine understood and appreciated the nature of this swift piece of artistic reporting.7



1 For a discussion of this sequence of works, see Kenneth McConkey, Sir John Lavery, Edinburgh, 1993, pp. 63-5.
2 This picture was also shown at the Champ de Mars Salon in 1895.
3 Lord McLaren (1831-1910) was the son of Duncan McLaren (1800-1886), Provost of Edinburgh, was also a lawyer, Member of Parliament, and Deputy Lieutenant of Edinburgh, Midlothian. Lavery painted his portrait as a three quarter length in 1893 which was shown at the Champs de Mars Salon in that year. Lavery's second portrait of Lord McLaren in 1899, won equal acclaim, being exhibited at the Exposition Internationale in Brussels in 1900 where it secured a First Class Medal. Esther McLaren sat for a number of portraits - the first being a full-length in 1893. This too was widely exhibited, receiving a Gold Medal, along with The Bridge at Grez, 1883 (private collection) at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1897. At least two smaller portraits are recorded (see McConkey 1993, p. 106). Within the McLaren family, legend has it that Esther may have been Lavery's girlfriend and that they travelled to Rome together in 1895. This is unlikely to be the case, since Lavery was recalled to paint Esther's father in 1899. At the time of her marriage to Alan Blackburn in April 1899 Lavery dedicated a Glencarron sketch to Esther (private collection).
4 Frederick Scott Oliver (1864-1934) made his fortune from the London retail firm of Debenham and Freebody. He purchased the Edgerston estate in Roxburghshire, on which he lived with his wife until his death. Katherine and he were cousins. In his later years Oliver wrote several political histories, focusing on the 18th Century. His most famous work was The Endless Adventure, (3 vol. 1930, 1931 and 1935) a study of the life of Thomas Walpole. The estate was sold in the 1980s.
5 Mark Oliver (1898-1987), after military service, was for a time, a pupil of Walter Sickert. As co-director of the Savile Gallery, London, he staged five important Sickert exhibitions between 1926 and 1930. His portrait was painted by Sickert, with the assistance of Thérèse Lessore circa 1937. In Paris in the 1920s Mark Oliver acquired an impressive collection including works by Modigliani, Goya and Titian (private collection, 2007).
6 The McLaren's radical taste is confirmed by the fact that Lord McLaren's brother, Charles McLaren, (later Lord Aberconway) had an important collection which included Whistler's Girl with Cherry Blossom, circa 1867.
7 Undoubtedly the approval of the McLaren girls was essential in securing the commission to paint their portrait.

We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for providing the catalogue entry for lots 156-8.