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Sir John Lavery RA RHA RSA (1856-1941)

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Sir John Lavery RA RHA RSA (1856-1941)
Sir John Lavery RA RHA RSA (1856-1941) SPRING IN A RIVIERA GARDEN signed lower right; signed, inscribed and dated [1921] on reverse oil on canvas 64 by 76cm., 25 by 30in. Exhibited: (?) ‘Pictures of Morocco, the Riviera and other scenes by Sir John Lavery RA, with Portrait and Child Studies by Lady Lavery’, Alpine Club Gallery, London, 1921, catalogue no. 45 (as The Garden, Villa Sylvia); (?) ’Portraits and Landscapes of Sir John Lavery RA’, Robert C. Vose Galleries, Boston, 1925-6, catalogue no. 25 (as A Garden at Cap Ferrat); Cartwright Memorial Hall, Bradford; ’Sir John Lavery RA 1856-1941’, Spink & Co., London, 1971, catalogue no. 53 Every year in January from 1903 onwards, Lavery visited his house in Tangier. His visits lasted around three months and he would return to London at the end of March for the start of the exhibition season. Although he sold the house in 1914, the pattern of extended winter holidays was resumed after the war when he returned to Morocco to visit Marrakesh, Rabat and Tangier. By this time however, a new enthusiasm was emerging. The south of France, with its sumptuous villas, grand hotels, casinos and sanatoria, had become fashionable at the turn of the century. With the laying of railways during the 1870s in the val de Rhone, tourists could not only travel from Paris to Nice, but connecting services made the area accessible from all over Europe and even as far afield as St Petersburg. Edwardian travel writers observed that the area around Cap Ferrat and Beaulieu was attracting “wealthy and leisured people”, who “come here to be quiet, to pass the winter in favourable surroundings and while not disdaining pleasure are not given to undue excitement”.1 Guidebooks of 1910 referred to the current enthusiasms for golf, tennis, roller-skating and motoring, and the region was noteworthy for ‘flash-harrys’, property speculators, card-sharps and pickpockets who hovered around the famous watering holes such as the Hotel de ‘Angleterre in Nice and the casino at Monte Carlo.2 Subdued during the war, the Riviera set re-emerged in greater numbers in the twenties. Nice and Monte Carlo were now talked about as having their own ‘season’ from January to April each year and the era, epitomized by the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, was inaugurated by the commencement of the exclusively first class train bleu in 1922. The côte d’azure had been enduringly fashionable with painters since the turn of the century, supplementing the popular artists’ colonies in Normandy and Brittany. Monet, Renoir, Derain and Matisse had all worked in the south of France and in the years leading up to the Great War, it attracted artists as various as the Irishman, William John Leech, the English, Henry Herbert la Thangue, the Scots, John Duncan Fergusson and the Welsh, Augustus John. Whilst these painters preferred the hill villages and romantic fishing ports, Lavery turned his back on obvious picturesqueness. With his pupil, Winston Churchill, he was an early arrival at the chic villas of Cap Ferrat in 1921.3 In his foreword to the catalogue accompanying Lavery’s exhibition to the Alpine Club Gallery later that year Churchill noted: ”He shows us sunlight in all its variety… gay and pellucid and pleasurable on the Riviera… We are presented with the true integrity of an effect. And this flash is expressed in brilliant and beautiful colour with the ease of long mastery”.4 It and the neighbouring resorts of Villefranche and Beaulieu-sur-Mer, were destinations of choice for an opulent, aristocratic English-speaking community that had included the Duke of Connaught, Lord Salisbury, Sir J. Blundell Maple and Gordon Bennett. Not only did Cap Ferrat satisfy Hazel Lavery’s social ambitions, but its incomparable coastal views drew the painter into a flurry of activity. Two views of Beaulieu were produced in the 1921 season, two other canvases represent the famous headland, the tête de chien, at Monte Carlo and yet others portray the terrace of Cap d’Ail and the steep path up to the village of Eze. Cap Ferrat boasted the best gardens on the Riviera and a micro-climate at Beaulieu, in the area known as ‘Petite Afrique’, produced the most luxurious vegetation in France. Spring, with its exotic blooms always arrived early, before the visitors departed. Whilst the garden in the present work has not been identified, it is likely to belong to the Villa Sylvia on Cap Ferrat. Lavery particularly admired this recreation of an Italian palazzo, and portrayed its white colonnade overlooking the sea on several occasions in 1921. The secluded garden was also a favourite motif – its trees and shrubs appearing in Spring, The Garden, Villa Sylvia 1921 (fig. 1, Ulster Museum, Belfast)5. Although painted from a slightly different angle and containing only the suggestion of figures, the Ulster Museum composition is strikingly similar to the present work. The precedent for depictions of garden tête-à-têtes in Lavery’s work goes back to 1889 when he painted members of Paisley Lawn Tennis Club (fig. 2, Renfrew District Museums and Galleries) under trees in blossom. However in recent years more intimate subjects were found in Tangier – particularly in Lavery’s own My Garden in Morocco, 1913 (private collection), where we sense the murmur of civilised conversation around the tea-table, as in the present example. Lavery preserves the privacy of the resting rich in the Riviera garden. None is identifiable, although they would certainly include Hazel Lavery, possibly the Churchills and maybe the recently married Duff and Diana Cooper, who were holidaying in the area. It is entirely possible in view of Hazel’s intense interest in Irish affairs that having read recent newspapers from London, they are discussing the politics of the emerging state. Kenneth McConkey, University of Northumbria 1 W. Scott, The Riviera, A&C Black, London, 1907, page 94. 2 Lavery was to paint the interior of the Salons Privées at the casino in 1929. See Kenneth McConkey, Sir John Lavery, Canongate, 1993, pages 180-181. Sources for the Riviera lifestyle at this period abound – see for instance, F. Berkeley Smith, Parisians Out of Doors, Funk and Wagnall, n.d., c. 1910, and Capt. Leslie Richardson, Things Seen on the Riviera, Seeley Service and Co., 1927. 3 The Churchills were photographed with the Duchess of Sutherland at Monte Carlo in 1913, and it is possible that Winston Churchill was one of those who recommended the South of France to Lavery. 4 RT. Hon, Winston S Churchill PC, MP, ‘Foreword’, Pictures of Morocco, the Riviera and other scenes by Sir John Lavery RA – Portrait and child Studies by Lady Lavery, exhibition catalogue, Alpine Club Gallery, London, 1921, pages 3-4. 5 Since the present picture appears more finished than that in the Ulster Museum, it may be that it was shown at the Alpine Club Gallery exhibition. A further possibility is the unidentified A Garden at Cap Ferrat, shown in Portraits and Landscapes of Sir John Lavery RA, at the Robert C. Vose Galleries, Boston, 1925-6, no. 25.
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