Sir John Lavery (1856-1941), RA, RSA (Harrington Mann, Collection: Glasgow Museums)

You can view on Your Paintings over 300 works by Lavery from national and local collections all over the UK, of particular interest to me for this Belfast-born ‘Glasgow Boy’ are the collections of the National Museums Northern Ireland in Belfast and those in Glasgow Museums. NMNI‘s collection comprises thirty-nine of Lavery’s paintings donated to the city of Belfast by the artist himself in 1929. The collection represents all stages of his career and contains some of his (and my) best-loved paintings. Glasgow Museums 142 oils were gifted by the artist in 1935. 

Lavery’s big break came in 1888, when he was commissioned to paint the State Visit of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition. You can see this full scale painting, which measures an impressive 256.5 x 406.4 cm, at Kelvingrove Art Gallery.

State Visit of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition, 1888 (John Lavery, Collection: Glasgow Museums)

Although known today largely as a society portrait painter, some of Lavery’s most celebrated works are more personal in nature, being portraits of his second wife and muse, Hazel Martyn, who became the subject of over 400 of his works. The Green Coat (1926), in the NMNI collection was not only the artist’s but also the sitter’s favourite portrait. Much admired, the painting went on to be used as an advert for Ponds Cream. The collection also contains many paintings made during Lavery’s travels to Switzerland, Florida and particularly Tangier, which Lavery visited almost every winter from the 1890s until 1920s. Paintings such as Tangier Bay, Sunshine (1920) convey an unmistakable serene atmosphere, the obvious reason for his annual sojourns.

Lavery was a man who sought to depict his era, as evident in a mural commission for the banqueting hall of the City Chambers in Glasgow. Modern Glasgow (1901), which can still be seen in Glasgow’s City Chambers, and in the preparatory painting Shipbuilding on the Clyde (1900) at GMRC, which depicts ordinary men hard at work at the Fairfield Shipyard in Govan

Shipbuilding on the Clyde (sketch) (John Lavery, Collection: Glasgow Museums)

Throughout his career and travels, Lavery retained strong ties to Glasgow and Ireland (as do I). During the 1920s the Laverys visited Ireland every August, splitting their time and loyalties between Belfast and Dublin. Lavery received honorary degrees from Dublin and Queen’s University, Belfast. In the 1930s following the death of Hazel and his daughter Eileen, Lavery, heart-broken, returned to live in Ireland with his step-daughter Alice. He died of natural causes in County Kilkenny, aged 84.

You can read more about Sir John Lavery on the PCF's website.

Alison Mitchelson is a Catalogue Coordinator (Northern Ireland) at the PCF