An exhibition of the works of the Irish Artist, John Lavery, was held recently in the National Gallery of Ireland, here in my home city of Dublin.
I unfortunately missed getting to see it, as life was just so busy, but I decided to research his background and write a little about him here.
He was an orphan, born in Belfast, March 20 1856. He moved to Scotland to live in Glasgow while still a child. He began his artistic training in Glasgow where he attended the Haldane Academy during the 1870's. He set up a studio which was destroyed by fire in 1878. He received an insurance payout which he used to attend the Heatherley School in London, where he spent a year, before going to further art study in Paris at the Academie Julian in the early 1880's.
He made visits to the artists' colony at Grez-Sur-Loing, near Fontainbleau. This was a picturesque village which encouraged him to paint en Plein-Air, a term used to describe painting in the open air. 'Under the Cherry Tree' is one of the larger and more ambitious works by him at that point in his career.
He married in 1889, but his wife died of TB. They had one daughter, Eileen, who he outlived. He remarried in 1909, to Hazel Martyn. She was an Irish-American.
He returned to Glasgow, and became part of the Glasgow Boys, a group of Scottish and Irish artists. His work had a sketch-like quality which often emphasised brushstrokes. This was a style similar to James McNeill Whistler. It was a reaction to the more traditional Victorian artists of that period.
He was commissioned to paint the state visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition in 1888, and this launched a career as a society portrait artist. He thus moved to London to pursue this.
He is best known for his portraiture work, and open-air paintings.
He died in Rossenarra House, near Kilmaganny, County Kilkenny on 10 January, 1941.
