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Lot Essay
In 1919 the Laverys received an invitation to stay at the Moorish palace of Dar Ennejma Ezzahra, at Sidi bou Said on the Bay of Tunis, recently renovated by their friend, Rodolphe d’Erlanger (K. McConkey, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, Edinburgh, 2010, p. 145). The offer may have come as a ‘thank you’ for Lavery’s support to the d’Erlanger brothers who at one point during the Great War, risked internment as enemy aliens. They had, it was quickly realized, been resident in Britain for over twenty years, and were highly respected international bankers. A recently discovered letter dated 30 April 1919, to Lavery’s daughter, Eileen, indicates that he, his wife, Hazel, and stepdaughter, Alice, were about to board ship for Palermo from where, a second vessel would take them to Rome, for the long train journey to Paris and thence to London. We can now securely date the present canvas to the four-week period prior to this date.
Following the Armistice in the previous November, Lavery’s duties as an Official War Artist continued into the new year, with paintings to complete in preparation for important commemorative ‘victory’ exhibitions. Work, since his appointment in the summer of 1917, had been relentless, and now, as life returned to normal in the midst of the Spanish Flu pandemic, portrait commissions – those of Duff Cooper, Mrs St John Graham and others – were lining up. When, finally discharged, it was with a further special request to paint field hospitals, ordnance and other military installations in Northern France that were about to be dismantled. This additional task was however deferred until after the Sidi bou Said sojourn.
Lavery never took holidays in the conventional sense. For him they provided an opportunity in an unfamiliar environment to restore the freshness of the eye and now at Rodolphe d’Erlanger’s great pre-war project - the restoration of the picturesque hilltop village, his joy in Arab life was reborn. Similarly, Dar Ennejma Ezzahra had provided the ideal setting for d’Erlanger’s painting forays and for his scholarly interests in Arab culture and ethnomusicology and the palace remains to this day a centre for the study of Arab music. Two years earlier, before his war duties began, Lavery had painted portraits of members of the d’Erlanger family and a fine interior of one of their houses, Falconwood, at Shooter’s Hill (sold in these rooms, 20 May 1999).
In later years Lavery recalled that when he arrived in Sidi bou Said, he thought of painting a beautiful Arab woman (J. Lavery, The Life of a Painter, London, 1940, p. 104). This may be apocryphal since he was immediately entranced by the town which, with its dazzling white buildings, reminded him of his beloved Tangier. What survives of the Tunisian holiday, apart from townscapes, a small sketch of Hazel Lavery at her dressing table, and a recently identified painting of Hazel and Alice in the palace garden, is a majestic series of views of the Bay of Tunis observed in morning and evening light. In the present example, the twin peaks of Mount Bou Kornine on the far side of the bay present bold silhouettes against the pale sky and sunlit cerulean expanse of sea. They dominate the housetops in Sidi bu Said, Tunis, 1919. Lavery would have appreciated the local legend which identifies them as pilgrims returning from Mecca, entranced by the beauty of the sight before them. At the painter’s feet lay the tiny harbour of Hammam-Lif, itself the subject of at least two studies, one of which, the pellucid Early Morning, Bay of Tunis, 1919, was painted from the shoreline.
However, the most imposing canvas of the entire Tunisian series is the present example. The calm waters of the inlet split the upright composition into two halves in a daring fashion. Lavery had attempted a similar effect in views of the Straits from his hilltop house at Tangier, but the distant hills of Andalusia were often obscured by cloud. Here the drama of the sunlit bay clearly recalls the Japonisme of Lavery’s youth. As a young painter he had decked his studio with Japanese fans, partly in emulation of James McNeill Whistler, one of the heroes of the earlier generation. During the American painter’s final years, he and Lavery were particularly close, as President and Vice-President respectively of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers. Not only was Lavery a pallbearer at Whistler’s funeral in 1903, but in 1905 he was instrumental in staging the Whistler memorial exhibition for which he borrowed Variations in Violet and Green, 1871, from Sir Charles McLaren, later Lord Aberconway.
This classic composition clearly remained in his mind. However, at Sidi bou Said, the scene was different. The grey Thames and heavy London skies were exchanged for shrill aquamarine and cobalt harmonies and factory chimneys gave way to the attractive undulations of Bou Kornine. As in Whistler’s work, the foreground is treated with great economy, its trees, buildings and beaches merely anchoring the splendid clarity of the morning on the North African coast. The Laverys never returned to Tunis, but in the following year they made what was to be their final expedition to Tangier and thereafter the luxuriant blues and ochres of Africa were exchanged for those of the Riviera.
Professor Kenneth McConkey
Following the Armistice in the previous November, Lavery’s duties as an Official War Artist continued into the new year, with paintings to complete in preparation for important commemorative ‘victory’ exhibitions. Work, since his appointment in the summer of 1917, had been relentless, and now, as life returned to normal in the midst of the Spanish Flu pandemic, portrait commissions – those of Duff Cooper, Mrs St John Graham and others – were lining up. When, finally discharged, it was with a further special request to paint field hospitals, ordnance and other military installations in Northern France that were about to be dismantled. This additional task was however deferred until after the Sidi bou Said sojourn.
Lavery never took holidays in the conventional sense. For him they provided an opportunity in an unfamiliar environment to restore the freshness of the eye and now at Rodolphe d’Erlanger’s great pre-war project - the restoration of the picturesque hilltop village, his joy in Arab life was reborn. Similarly, Dar Ennejma Ezzahra had provided the ideal setting for d’Erlanger’s painting forays and for his scholarly interests in Arab culture and ethnomusicology and the palace remains to this day a centre for the study of Arab music. Two years earlier, before his war duties began, Lavery had painted portraits of members of the d’Erlanger family and a fine interior of one of their houses, Falconwood, at Shooter’s Hill (sold in these rooms, 20 May 1999).
In later years Lavery recalled that when he arrived in Sidi bou Said, he thought of painting a beautiful Arab woman (J. Lavery, The Life of a Painter, London, 1940, p. 104). This may be apocryphal since he was immediately entranced by the town which, with its dazzling white buildings, reminded him of his beloved Tangier. What survives of the Tunisian holiday, apart from townscapes, a small sketch of Hazel Lavery at her dressing table, and a recently identified painting of Hazel and Alice in the palace garden, is a majestic series of views of the Bay of Tunis observed in morning and evening light. In the present example, the twin peaks of Mount Bou Kornine on the far side of the bay present bold silhouettes against the pale sky and sunlit cerulean expanse of sea. They dominate the housetops in Sidi bu Said, Tunis, 1919. Lavery would have appreciated the local legend which identifies them as pilgrims returning from Mecca, entranced by the beauty of the sight before them. At the painter’s feet lay the tiny harbour of Hammam-Lif, itself the subject of at least two studies, one of which, the pellucid Early Morning, Bay of Tunis, 1919, was painted from the shoreline.
However, the most imposing canvas of the entire Tunisian series is the present example. The calm waters of the inlet split the upright composition into two halves in a daring fashion. Lavery had attempted a similar effect in views of the Straits from his hilltop house at Tangier, but the distant hills of Andalusia were often obscured by cloud. Here the drama of the sunlit bay clearly recalls the Japonisme of Lavery’s youth. As a young painter he had decked his studio with Japanese fans, partly in emulation of James McNeill Whistler, one of the heroes of the earlier generation. During the American painter’s final years, he and Lavery were particularly close, as President and Vice-President respectively of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers. Not only was Lavery a pallbearer at Whistler’s funeral in 1903, but in 1905 he was instrumental in staging the Whistler memorial exhibition for which he borrowed Variations in Violet and Green, 1871, from Sir Charles McLaren, later Lord Aberconway.
This classic composition clearly remained in his mind. However, at Sidi bou Said, the scene was different. The grey Thames and heavy London skies were exchanged for shrill aquamarine and cobalt harmonies and factory chimneys gave way to the attractive undulations of Bou Kornine. As in Whistler’s work, the foreground is treated with great economy, its trees, buildings and beaches merely anchoring the splendid clarity of the morning on the North African coast. The Laverys never returned to Tunis, but in the following year they made what was to be their final expedition to Tangier and thereafter the luxuriant blues and ochres of Africa were exchanged for those of the Riviera.
Professor Kenneth McConkey