62
41
Sir John Lavery RA RHA RSA (1856-1941)
Tangier, The White City
Oil on canvas, 58.5 x 81cm (23 x 32”)
Signed, inscribed and dated 1893
Signed, inscribed and dated( 18)93. Also signed ‘John Lavery’ and inscribed with
address on reverse. Inscribed indistinctly ‘Tangier’ on stretcher.
Provenance: Christie’s, Modern British and Irish Paintings, 21st November, 1995 where
purchased by current owner.
Exhibited: Ghent, 1902
Berlin, Schulte Gallery, John Lavery, 1904
London, Goupil Gallery,
John Lavery,
August 1908, no. 51.
“
The Lure of the East - British Orientalist Painting
” traveling exhibition
Yale Center for British Art , New Haven Feb/April 2008
Tate Britain, London June/August 2008
Suna and Inan Kirc Foundation Pera Museum, Istanbul Sept 2008/Jan 2009
“
Pioneering painters - The Glasgow Boys
” Exhibition
Kelvingrove Art Galleryand Museum April - Sept 2010
Royal Academy of Arts Oct 2010 - Jan 2011 Cat. No. 92
Literature : W. Shaw-Sparrow,
John Lavery and his Work
, London, 1912, p 3, 184, 189.
Kenneth McConkey, ‘
The White City – Sir John Lavery in Tangier’
in The Irish Arts Review*,
p 56, illustrated.
Kenneth McConkey, 1993,
Sir John Lavery,
Edinburgh, 83, 92, illustrated Plate 102.
Kenneth Mc Conkey “
John Lavery - a painter and his world
” 2010 illustrated P62
“
The Lure of the East, British Orientalism Painting”
Fig 108 Full page Illustration P125
Lavery first visited Tangier in Morocco in 1890. He had a long relationship with ‘The White City’, which his friend and fellow
artist R.B. Cunninghame Graham had described thus: ‘the chief note of Tangier is its whiteness. White houses, sands like snow,
and, above all, a dazzling white atmosphere’. In 1903 Lavery bought Dar-el-Midfah, a small house in the hills outside Tangier
which he continued to visit with his family for the next 20 years.
Taking a high point the artist looks down on the beach with the city in the distance.This was worked up from ‘
Study for Tangier
- White City’
1893. He emphasises in this painting the north African landscape and topography and these earlier paintings il-
lustrate evidence of expeditions resulting in these photographic type snapshots, rather than engaging the viewer with Arab life
and culture. McConkey states that “many of them appear tentative and are athmospheric, almost Turner like in their effects”.
We acknowledge the art historian, Prof. Kenneth McConkey, whose scholarly writings on Lavery form the basis of this
catalogue entry.
€50,000 - 70,000
