John Lavery

John Lavery, I (From 1880 to 1889) Glasgow School

• Report rights infringement
• published: 22 Oct 2013
• views: 799

Glasgow School: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBAD43E274ACE5A01 Pour Ange Marie, Joyeux Anniversaire!!! http://www.youtube.com/user/miscellanea48 Sir John Lavery (20 March 1856 -- 10 January 1941) was an Irish painter best known for his portraits. Belfast-born John Lavery attended the Haldane Academy, in Glasgow, in the 1870s and the Académie Julian in Paris in the early 1880s. He returned to Glasgow and was associated with the Glasgow School. With such important works as the Tennis Party (1885; Aberdeen, A.G.), Lavery became one of the leaders of the Glasgow boys, a group of young painters committed to the ideals of naturalism. In 1888 he was commissioned to paint the state visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition. This launched his career as a society painter and he moved to London soon after. In London he became friendly with James McNeill Whistler and was clearly influenced by him. Lavery's first wife, Kathleen MacDermott, whom he married in 1889, died of tuberculosis in 1891, shortly after the birth of their daughter, Eileen (later Lady Sempill, 1890--1935). In 1910 he married Hazel Martyn Trudeau, (1886--1935), an Irish-American known for her beauty and poise; by her he had one daughter, Alice (Mrs. Jack McEnery). Hazel Lavery was to figure in more than 400 of her husband's paintings. The sumptuous The Artist's Studio: Lady Lavery with her Daughter Alice and Step-Daughter Eileen, currently is in the National Gallery of Ireland. Hazel Lavery modelled for the allegorical figure of Ireland he painted on commission from the Irish government, reproduced on Irish banknotes from 1928 until 1975 and then as a watermark until the introduction of the Euro in 2002. The Laverys' marriage was tempestuous, and Lady Lavery is reputed to have had affairs with Kevin O'Higgins and Michael Collins, the Irish revolutionary leader. Like William Orpen, Lavery was appointed an official artist in the First World War. Ill-health, however, prevented him from travelling to the Western Front. A serious car crash during a Zeppelin bombing raid also kept him from fulfilling this role as war artist. He remained in Britain and mostly painted boats, planes and airships. During the war years he was a close friend of the Asquith family and spent time with them at their Sutton Courtenay Thames-side residence, painting their portraits and idyllic pictures like Summer on the River (Hugh Lane Gallery). After the war in 1918 he was knighted and in 1921 he was elected to the Royal Academy; he was also a member of the RHA, Royal Scottish Academy, and the academies of Rome, Antwerp, Milan, Brussels, and Stockholm. During this time, he and his wife both became interested in their Irish heritage and were tangentially involved in both the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War: they gave the use of their London home to the Irish negotiators during the negotiations leading to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. After Michael Collins was killed, Lavery painted Michael Collins, Love of Ireland, now in the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery. In 1929 John Lavery made substantial donations of his work to both The Ulster Museum and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery and in the 1930s he returned to Ireland. He received honorary degrees from the University of Dublin and Queen's University of Belfast. He was also made a free man of both Dublin and Belfast. A long-standing member of Glasgow Art Club, Lavery exhibited at the club's annual exhibitions, including its exhibition in 1939 in which his The Lake at Ranelagh was included. At eighty-four he published his autobiography, The Life of a Painter (1940) and died at Rosenarra House, in County Kilkenny, aged 84, from natural causes. He was buried in Putney Vale Cemetery. Unquestionably one of the greatest painters of the late 19th and 20th centuries, the name Sir John Lavery is immediately associated with a time of Edwardian elegance, the roaring twenties, scandal and the struggle for Irish independence. Music: "The Banks of Green Willow" George Butterworth.