Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.H.A., R.S.A. (1856-1941)

A Garden in Morocco

Details
Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.H.A., R.S.A. (1856-1941)
A Garden in Morocco
signed 'J Lavery' (lower right), signed again, dated and inscribed 'PRESENTED TO LADY PAGET'S WAR FUND FOR CHILDREN, JUNE 1918. A GARDEN IN MOROCCO./BY JOHN LAVERY./1912'(on the reverse)
oil on canvas
25½ x 30¾ in. (65 x 78 cm.)
Provenance
Purchased by the present owner in 1973.

Lot Essay

The present work is from a small series of pictures of gardens in Morocco, painted during one of the artist's regular winter sojourns in Tangier, at his home on a hill outside the city, Dar El Midfah, or 'The House of the Cannon' because apparently there was a half-buried cannon in the garden. The girl riding the donkey is the artist's step-daughter Alice, who came to Morocco with her mother Hazel after she had married Lavery in July 1909. The donkey, Moses, was a delinquent animal which Alice later gave to her mother in exchange for a horse. The moorish child may be Hadeshia, one of Lavery's models, or Aida, the housemaid whom the Laverys smuggled back to London, and who appears with Hazel, Alice and Eileen in 'The Studio', Lavery's homage to Velasquez, begun around 1910 (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin).

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