John Lavery
Biography And Paintings Of The Irish Artist And Portrait Painter.
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On the Road to Fontainebleau

Sir John Lavery (1856-1941)

Born in Belfast, but soon orphaned, Lavery spent his early years on his uncle's farm. At the age of ten, more family problems led to his relocation to Scotland where he attended the Haldane Academy in Glasgow. Afterwards he worked as an apprentice photographer and, from this experience he developed an ambition to become a portrait painter. He travelled to Paris in 1881, where he studied drawing at the Academie Julian and fine art painting at Colarossi's studio. In 1883, he spent time at the artists' colony of Grez-sur-Loing, and made friends with the older Irish artist Frank O'Meara as well as the French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage, both of whom influenced his painting. In 1883 he exhibited his first French landscape, Les Deux Pecheurs.

On The Loing

During his stay at the artists' colony, he took to landscape painting in the open air (en plein air) as he absorbed the ideas and methods of the Barbizon and Impressionist landscape school (including Manet and Degas), all of which were high fashion at the time. One of his favourite subjects was the river Loing - especially the local stone bridge.

In 1885, Lavery returned to Glasgow and became a leading member of the "Glasgow School". In 1888, he was given the commission of painting the state visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition. This task launched him as a society painter and he moved to London soon after where he set up a portrait studio in Cromwell Place.

In London he became acquainted with James McNeill Whistler and was noticeably influenced by him. The style of his society portrait art won him many admirers. He also spent time in Ireland where in 1907 he was duly elected a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin.

In 1914, like his fellow Irish artist William Orpen, Lavery was made an official war artist, but ill-health and a car accident ruled out any active duty. It was during this time that he became friendly with the Asquith family whose portraits he painted along with such pictures like Summer on the River.

After the war, Lavery received a knighthood and then in 1921 was elected to the Royal Academy. He also became more involved with Irish art and politics. Lavery always saw himself as a recorder of events, thus, in 1921, during the Anglo-Irish negotiations over the Irish Treaty, he painted numerous portraits of the members of the Irish delegation, and after the death of the Irish Republican leader Michael Collins he completed Michael Collins, Love of Ireland. In the 1930s, he returned to Ireland for good and died in County Kilkenny, aged 84.

Lavery first married Kathleen MacDermott, who tragically died of tuberculosis. In 1909 he married the beautiful Irish-American Hazel Martyn (1887-1935), whom he also outlived.

The knowing look exchanged by Lavery and Hazel, makes this portrait an especially intimate composition. Lavery was obsessed by her beauty, and she appeared in over 400 of his paintings - see also the The Red Rose, below. One of her portraits was replicated on the Irish pound note until the 1970s. The Irish government invited Lavery to paint his wife's portrait for the punt in gratitude for the help the Laverys gave to the Irish political delegation in London, in 1921.

Lavery eventually returned to live in Ireland, and died in Kilkenny in 1941. He is remembered as one of the greatest painters in the history of Irish art.

The Red Rose began life in 1892 as a portrait of Mrs William Burrell. In 1912, the canvas was adapted into a portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, then a portrait of Viscountess Curzon before becoming a portrait of Lavery's wife.

See also: Plein-Air Painting in Ireland.

More Information About Irish Culture

• For details of other fine art painters, see: Irish Artists: Paintings and Biographies.
• For more about Impressionism in Ireland, see: Irish Art Guide.

• NOTE: To update John Lavery's biography, click Here.

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