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20

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