Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 26 MARCH 2025

68 It says much for John Lavery’s precocity that when he returned to Glasgow at the end of 1884, he sought subject matter in the social life of the city. A door had shut upon the goatherds and washerwomen that he had painted at Grez-sur- Loing as he moved on to the pleasures and pas- times of the urban middle classes who had rec- ognised his talents. Tennis, croquet and yachting were new sources – as indeed were the simpler rituals of coming and going and dressing for an occasion. A visitor arrives, she sits for a moment and is offered a cup of tea. Au Bal , the water- colour, speaks for itself. An attractive young woman, a fan dangling from her wrist, consults her dance card – a face, a form and an action, isolated and observed across a crowded room (figs 1&2). Lavery’s work for the next fifty-odd years would abound in such scopophilia. The same contingency is inferred in the present work. Although neither signed nor inscribed, Portrait Interior with Oriental Screen can con- fidently be attributed to Lavery.¹ Dating from c. 1885-6, subject matter, handling and circum- stantial detail echo other works of the period.² The artist’s model, in the present instance wears an evening dress of similar style to that in Portrait of a Young Lady , 1886 (fig 3).³ There is, however, enough information in the model’s face in the present lot for us to suggest that she could be none other than Bella Cullen, who posed for Lavery’s A Fair Flower , (figs 4&5), a work exhibited at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in February 1887.4 Cullen was the short-lived consumptive teenage daughter of an Irish miner who lived in Paisley. 5 Although elements of the present work remain unresolved, Lavery’s Portrait Interior with Orien- tal Screen points to future ambitions. A career would be built on portraits of seated women and men – in many instances essayed in small unfin- ished oil sketches that indicate no more than simple studio props and the placing of arms and limbs. How someone sits or stands could be as revelatory as facial expression. A few swift notes were often enough to take us to the vivid sense of anticipation that animates the present study. Prof. Kenneth McConkey 49 SIR JOHN LAVERY RA, RSA, RHA (1856-1941) Portrait Interior with Oriental Screen (c.1886) Oil on panel, 42 x 28cm (16½ x 11”) Provenance: Private Collection, Ireland € 5,000 - 8,000 1. While the artist is known during these years to have had temporary studios in both Glasgow and Paisley, a survey of the work of friends – the famed ‘Glasgow Boys’ – produces no challenge to the Lavery attribution. 2. Telling ingredients in the present work include the screen, described with greater definition in A Visitor 1885 (fig 1), while the unresolved ob- ject in the model ’s right hand is likely to be a fan made from bird plumage. For A Visitor, see Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, 2010 (Atelier Books), pp. 30-31. 3. For Portrait of a Young Lady, see Bonhams, London, 15 March 2016, lot 78. 4. A Fair Flower was sold at Sotheby’s Gleneagles as Head of a Girl on 1 September 2004 lot 696. While the identification is a matter of conjec ture, it should be noted that the sitter for the ex-Sotheby’s painting is rouged and wearing make-up. 5. Cullen appears in a number of other works of the period, modelling for Dwan af ter the Battle of Langside, 14 May 1568, 1886-8 (Private Collection) and for a further portrait gif ted to Stevenson, see Kenneth McConkey, Lavery/Osborne, Observing Life, 2019 (exhibition cat- alogue, Hunt Museum, Limerick), pp. 22-3. She died at the end of October 1888 and, with his friend and fellow painter, Robert Macaulay Stevenson, Lavery visited her on her deathbed. Legend has it that her reprobate father drank her earnings. Fig 1 John Lavery, A Visitor , 1885, 46 x 46 cm, Image, National Gallery of Ireland Fig 2 John Lavery, Au Bal, 1885, 30 x 30 cm (approx), Private Collection Fig 3 John Lavery, Portrait of a Young Lady , 1886, 77.5 x 64.2 cm, Private Collection Fig 4 John Lavery, A Fair Flower , 1887, 38 x 26 cm, Private Collection Fig 5 John Lavery, Portrait Interior with Oriental Screen , c. 1886, the present picture (detail). 1 3 4 5 2