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Sir John Lavery RHA RA RSA (1856-1941)
A Moorish Garden
Oil on board, 23 x 34.5cm (9¼ x 13½”)
Signed and inscribed to ‘Walter Harris’
Provenance: “Modern British and Irish Sale” Sothebys June 1996 Cat. No. 34 where purchased by current own-
er.
From the 1830s North Africa and the Middle East became places of artistic pilgrimage, but while painters
such as Lewis, Lear and Holman Hunt preferred the eastern Mediterranean, in Lavery’s era an instant
Orient was to be found by simply crossing the Straits of Gibraltar.Where Orientalist painters concentrat-
ed upon narrating the Eastern way of life, the rituals of the Mosque and the Harem, Lavery’s generation
looked to this environment for its colour. His first visit to Morocco took place in 1891, at the instigation
of his friends, the Glasgow artists Arthur Melville and Joseph Crawhall. After almost annual visits, in
1903 he bought Dar-el-Midfah (‘the House of the Cannon’, for a half buried cannon in the garden), a
small house in the hills outside Tangier which he continued to visit with his family over the next 20 years.
This work shows the garden of Walter Harris’ home referred to in Kenneth Mc Conkey’s book on Sir
John Lavery (1993 p.98) and depicts one of Harris’s Moorish maids sitting by the fountain.Walter Harris,
a good friend of the artist was “The Times” correspondent in Morocco and his house was just a short ride
across the beach. Lavery painted Harris’s portrait in Fez in 1906 (Full page illustration “John Lavery: a
painter and his world” by Kenneth Mc Conkey 2010 Fig 115 p.99) which was at the end of a very eventful
overland journey the men took in the company of Cunninghame Graham to this famous city which was
100 miles south-east of Tangier and this work was also inscribed to his friend.
It has been claimed that for Lavery the strong light, cloudless sky, white walls and bright colour of Arab
dress helped to cleanse his eye after sustained periods of studio portraiture. Within a few years of visiting
Morocco for the first time, the light sable sketching of his Glasgow period gave way to a richer and more
sensuous application.
With thanks to Dr Kenneth McConkey whose research formed the basis of this note.
€10,000 - 15,000