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WHYTES
SINCE 1783
,
35
Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941)
LADY IN GREEN (MRS. CARA H.), 1903
oil on canvas
signed lower right; signed again and inscribed with titled and dated
at 5 Cromwell Place, London on label on reverse; also with
exhibition label, partially removed Caledonian Railway label and
label indicating name and address of original owner, all on reverse.
35 by 24ins. (91 by 64cm)
Provenance:
The property of E.F.B. Johnston, Esq., K.C. Toronto;
Harry Diamond, Toronto purchased circa 1958;
His Estate, Toronto;
Private collection
Exhibited:
The Art Museum of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario), the
“
Second Exhibition Catalogue of a Loan Collection of paintings of
the English, Old Master, Modern Dutch, French and other European
Schools Contributed by Private Collectors
” from 24th November -
16th December 1909, catalogue no. 38.
Literature:
The Art Museum of Toronto, The Second exhibition catalogue
The recovery of Lavery’s previously unrecorded
Lady in Green
from a private
collection in Canada sheds new light upon an important phase of his work
in the early years of the twentieth century. Although much is known about
his management of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and
Gravers as its vice-president, his close relationship with its president, James
McNeill Whistler, in the years leading up to the latter’s death in 1903, has not
been fully described.
1
While his movements cannot be accurately plotted following the society’s
foundation in 1898, the consistent feature of his work during these years
was the influence of Whistler. Both revered the work of Velazquez and from
Lavery’s early days as one of the leading ‘Glasgow Boys’, the American had
been a guiding hand.Visiting Whistler in the nineties he would have had the
opportunity to admire small sketches such as
Rose and Silver: Portrait of Mrs
Charles Whibley
(fig 1).
Although he later came to the opinion that
contact with Whistler prevented him from
‘painting with any vigour’ for a time, it is
undoubtedly true that some of Lavery’s
subtlest and most evocative portraits were
painted as a result.
2
In these the sitter was
often unidentified and the works, when
shown, were simply entitled according to their
particular colour harmonies – hence,
A Lady in
Green
.
In the present case the sitter’s identity
continues to remain a mystery, as does the
picture’s early history prior to its arrival in
Toronto.
3
At that point it became the property
of Ebenezer Forsyth Blackie Johnston KC,
described by his peers in the Canadian Club as
‘an earnest patron of the fine arts and an
assiduous collector of high class oil paintings
and watercolours’.
4
We note his wider interests in modern Dutch art –
Hague School painting that allied him closely with Lavery’s early Scottish
patrons.
5
Lady in Green
(fig 2) was thus a sophisticated purchase by a sophisticated
patron, and it slips seamlessly into the general pattern of Lavery’s painting
in the years leading
up to 1903. During
that year he exhibited
the portrait of
Idonea
La Primaudaye
at the
New Gallery – a
picture which, like the
present example
employs a gilded
ladder-back chair as
its only visible prop
(fig 3).
Described as ‘quiet,
yet accomplished’,
the portrait of Miss La
Primaudaye carries
the same air of
distinction evident in
Lady in Green
and it forms part of a sequence that
includes ladies in pink, purple and black.
6
They were decorous rather than
dutiful and in at least one instance, that of
Nora
(Private Collection),
harmonies of colour and tone were considered so subtle that reproduction
would fail to do it justice.
7
The sequence was however, best summed up by
James Stanley Little in 1902, when he wrote,
… Mr Lavery’s art grows on one. More and more, as one looks at it, its
subtle charm, both in the sense of refined and elegant craftsmanship,
and in the sense of spiritual and intellectual qualities, pervades the
onlooker … Everything that leaves Lavery’s easel has the stamp of
finality and spontaneity upon it which marks the master hand.
8
Such an encomium applies as much to the present work as to others of the
period.
Prof. Kenneth McConkey
September 2014
€
20,000-
€
30,000 (£16,000-£24,000 approx.)
1
Kenneth McConkey,
John Lavery, A Painter and his World,
2010 (Atelier Books), pp.
68-74, 76-7, 80-4.
2
McConkey 2010, p. 81.
3
Further research is required to establish the full name of ‘Mrs Cara H —-‘. Lavery for
instance exhibited a portrait of Mrs Hoare (unlocated) at the Royal Scottish
Academy in 1903. His RSA Diploma work, eight years earlier had of course been a
seated portrait –
The Rocking Chair
(McConkey 2010, pp. 67-8). It has not been
possible at this time to determine if Mrs Hoare’s portrait was indeed the present
picture, nor can we discover why the canvas was apparently sent to Dunoon from
Glasgow, as the old Caledonian Railways label on the reverse indicates.
4
See EFB Johnston, KC ‘Toronto’,
Proceedings of the Canadian Club of Ontario,
22
April 1912. Johnston (d.1919), a barrister, had his original practice in Acton, Ontario
before moving to Toronto where he became Hon President of the Ontario Bar
Association and Vice-President of the Royal Bank of Canada.
5
Johnston wrote on ‘Canadian Collectors and Modern Dutch Art’, for
The Canadian
Magazine …
vol xxxvi, 1910-11, pp. 430-4; and his monograph,
Painting and
Sculpture in Canada,
was published in 1913. Leading Canadian collectors of this
period were often of Scottish Protestant lineage – hence their admiration for Hague
School fieldwork subject matter. Johnston lent two other Laverys to the 1909
Toronto exhibition –
Lady in Pink
(no 37) and
Mary in Black
(no 39).This latter
picture (sold Christie’s 26 May 2011), although a head and shoulders study, 14 x 10
¼ ins, also shows the model seated on a similar gilded cane chair.
6
Arguably Lavery’s seated portrait compositions can be taken back to
After the
Dance,
1883 (Private Collection, McConkey 2010, p. 20), while Whistler’s
Arrangement in Grey and Black, no1, the Painter’s Mother,
1872 (Musée d’Orsay,
Paris), remained his most celebrated and accessible portrait by the 1890s. Around
this time Lavery produced other ‘harmonies in green’ – such
Mary in Green,
(National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) and
The Green Coat
(Bradford Museums and
Art Galleries), both of which depict his German model, Mary Auras.
7
ACR Carter, ‘John Lavery RSA’,
The Art Journal,
1904, p. 10.
8
James Stanley Little, ‘A Cosmopolitan Painter; John Lavery’,
The Studio,
vol xxvii,
1902, p. 113.
Fig 1 James McNeill Whistler,
Rose and Silver: Portrait of Mrs
Charles Whibley
, c1895,
watercolour, Freer Gallery of
Art,Washington DC
Fig 2
Lady in Green
, 1903,
the present picture
Fig
3 Idonea La
Primaudaye
, 1903, Private
Collection