46
WHYTES
SINCE 1783
,
50
Sir John Lavery RA, RSA, RHA (1856-1941)
THE RISING MOON, TANGIER, 1912
oil on canvas
signed lower left; with title [THE RISING MOON/ TANGIER
BAY/BY/JOHN LAVERY/ 5. CROMWELL PL:/ LONDON/1912]
(
in a later hand) on reverse
40
by 49.5ins (101.6 by 125.7cm)
Provenance:
The artist;
Thence by descent to Mrs J McEnery;
Her sale, Adam’s, 11 December 1990, lot 93;
Private collection
Christie’s 20 May 1999, lot 51;
Private collection
Adam’s 25 May 2005, lot 81
Literature:
Mallie, Eamonn, ed,
One Hundred Years of Irish Art,
2000,
p.186
Following their marriage in July 1909, Lavery’s wife, Hazel and
stepdaughter, Alice, joined his entourage on regular winter sojourns in
Tangier.
1
Since 1891, the year of his first visit, Lavery had been
captivated by ‘the White City’ and in 1903 had secured a house on
Mount Washington overlooking the Straits of Gibraltar.
2
Here the
wealthy members of the international community had built
themselves secluded villas at a discreet distance from the
souk
and
the
kasbah.
Whilst it was not palatial, Lavery’s retreat, Dar-el-Midfah,
‘
the House of Cannon’, had a sumptuous terraced garden where
rambling bougainvillea led the visitor down the hillside towards the
sea.This became his winter studio for the first four months of each
year, and the place where some of his most memorable canvases were
painted.
After 1910, Hazel
and Alice brought a
new dimension to
the painter’s Tangier
studies. Mother and
daughter were
glimpsed on the
beach, on the hilltop
paths and
entertaining at
alfresco breakfasts
on the veranda and
in the garden.Their
presence on these
occasions was often
a foil to the
resplendent vistas provided by a series of headlands known as the
Pillars of Hercules that, for the traveller, formed ‘the gateway of a world
of wonder’. ‘Nothing in Tangier’ wrote HD Traill, ‘will compare
with the approach to it by its incomparable bay’.
3
Looking eastward, it
is this sequence of inlets leading to the great sweeping bay that we
see in the present work.The city is tucked behind the hill on the right.
This particular view was one that Lavery painted on many occasions in
small 10 by 14 inch studies, one of which was presented to the Scots
adventurer, RB Cunninghame Graham (fig 1). However in 1912, the
painter took up this 40 by 50 inch canvas to do full justice to the
spectacle.
The idyllic world was nevertheless
fraught with danger: several of
Lavery’s neighbours had been
kidnapped by local brigands and
Hazel, fearful for her daughter’s
safety, accompanied her
everywhere.The Sultan was weak,
his police, ineffectual, and his local
administrators, corrupt. Such was
the growing lawlessness in
Morocco that in March 1912, the
French army, stationed across the
border in Algeria, invaded.Tangier
was momentarily quiet, save for
the social event of the season, the
marriage of Eileen Lavery, the
painter’s daughter, to James
Dickinson, a Liverpool solicitor.
4
Planning for this event did not
deter the painter as he embarked
on one of his most productive
Tangier seasons. In the present canvas Alice, now aged eight, wearing
her favourite bandana (fig 2), takes centre stage.
A second figure, probably her mother, sits overlooking the scene.
Lavery may have wished to include others in the composition but in
the end an empty chair and table were sufficient to indicate that at
moonrise the guests have gone.
5
The last rays of the sun, sinking
behind the painter as his works, pick out tiny white buildings perched
on the edge of the citadel in the distance.The romance however was
not to last. After 1914 travel was restricted and only one further visit
was made in 1920.Thereafter, attention shifted to the Riviera and the
House of the Cannon was sold in 1923.Ten years later, on a
Mediterranean cruise the Laverys passed the Pillars of Hercules
without disembarking and the painter looked out upon the White City
for the last time. ‘I feel quite sad remembering the past’ he wrote to
his old friend and fellow expatriate ‘Tangerine’, Cunninghame Graham.
Prof Kenneth McConkey
November, 2012
1
Alice, later Mrs J McEnery, was Hazel Lavery’s daughter by her first marriage to
Dr Edward Livingston Trudeau Jnr.
2
Kenneth McConkey,
John Lavery, A Painter and his World,
2010, (
Atelier Books),
pp. 54-6, 95-105.
3
HD Traill, ‘The Pillars of Hercules’ in
The Picturesque Mediterranean, Its Cities,
Shores and Islands,
n.d. [c.1890], (Cassell Publishing Company), pp. 2,6.
4
McConkey 2010, p. 116
5
Since the picture does not appear in the probate valuation of the contents of
Lavery’s studio made shortly after his death, we may assume that it was
already assigned to Mrs McEnery, later Mrs Stephen Gwynn.This would be
logical since she is the child represented. Close examination of the paint
surface indicates that since it left Mrs Gwynn’s possession in 1990 the picture
has been re-stretched and re-lined to restore Lavery’s original composition.
€
80,000-
€
120,000 (
£64,000-£96,000 approx.)
Fig 1
Moonrise,Tangier,
c. 1912, Private Collection
Fig 2
Miss Alice Trudeau,
1912,
Private Collection