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Lot Essay
The present head study of Olivia Robertson identifies one of Lavery's earliest sitters. In the two years prior to his departure for Paris in November 1881, he attempted a variety of genres - painting devotional, historical and mythological works and scenes from popular literature. He recognized early in his career that one or two critical successes with works of this kind might lead to lucrative portrait commissions. This was in essence, the path he took, after his return to Glasgow at the end of 1884.
Miss Robertson is however an important discovery, since the only other name we can associate with Lavery's work in 1880 is that of Connie Gilchrist, the model for Her First Disappointment. Miss Robertson's facial features and hairstyle are similar to those of the unidentified Lady sewing in a Parlour (Kenneth McConkey, Sir John Lavery, A Painter and his World, Atelier Books, 2010, p. 16, illus). Both women wear dark grey-black dresses with stiff white collars, while the lively paintwork of the corsage in the present example gives a foretaste of the self-confident handling that was to be such a consistent feature of the mature Lavery.
We are grateful to Kenneth McConkey for cataloguing the present work.
Miss Robertson is however an important discovery, since the only other name we can associate with Lavery's work in 1880 is that of Connie Gilchrist, the model for Her First Disappointment. Miss Robertson's facial features and hairstyle are similar to those of the unidentified Lady sewing in a Parlour (Kenneth McConkey, Sir John Lavery, A Painter and his World, Atelier Books, 2010, p. 16, illus). Both women wear dark grey-black dresses with stiff white collars, while the lively paintwork of the corsage in the present example gives a foretaste of the self-confident handling that was to be such a consistent feature of the mature Lavery.
We are grateful to Kenneth McConkey for cataloguing the present work.