Lavery was the poet of the Straits of Gibraltar. From the flat rooftop of his villa on Mount Washington, he had unparalleled views along the North African coast beyond nearby Tangier, to the east, and westwards in the direction of Cape Spartel. Snapshots reveal that this open-air studio was his favourite Moroccan workshop, and, on many occasions, he would rest his field box on the parapet to paint small, atmospheric sketches of the neighbouring hills. The landscape was revealed at first as the backdrop in Orientalist pictures of musicians, dancers and serving girls such as The Housetops, Evening c. 1906-7 (Private Collection) and Evening, Tangier (1906, Birmingham Museums Trust).

Dispensing with foreground incident these little sketches came simply to embrace the hilltops surrounding Dar el Midfah, his celebrated house, steep sloping garden and studio. Fresh and spontaneous, they reveal an enduring fascination with the ever-changing cloud formations that were funnelled through the Straits. A number of these 10 x 14-inch canvas-boards, dating variously between 1911 and 1920, may relate directly to the present larger work (fig. 1).

Since all were painted on the spot, associating specific sketches with the present larger work is problematic. Some were signed, but left undated, while others were given to friends and dated with the gift, rather than at the point of completion. We can, however, confidently state that, avoiding the heat of midday, the painter would work in the early mornings and in the hours before sunset. Colours, at these times, were at their most vivid and on a crisp winter or early spring morning he could, as in the present work, see the peak of Jebel Musa, away in the distance beyond Cape Malabata.

One of the two so-called ‘Pillars of Hercules’, Jebel Musa was, with Gibraltar, an important landmark for ancient mariners, as much as for Lavery (HD Traill, ‘The Pillars of Hercules’ in The Picturesque Mediterranean, Its Cities, Shores and Islands, vol 1, n.d., [c.1890] (Cassell & Co), pp. 1-21). In Greek and Roman antiquity, the ‘pillars’ stood at the end of the known navigable world. At 2762 feet, it is the final peak in the Rif mountain range that stretches down into the Mahgreb. About 15 miles, as the crow flies, from Lavery’s vantage point on what was then known as Mount Washington, it dominates the port of Ceuta, as the North African coast dips south and extends eastwards towards the Algerian border.

Eighty years earlier, the United States government had donated a Legation to Tangier, known as ‘Mount Washington’ from which both house and hillside took its name. Throughout the nineteenth century, successive Sultans often believed that they could use American allies as a bulwark against incursions from the Great Powers of Europe (for the geopolitics surrounding Tangier as an artist’s haunt in Lavery’s time, see Kenneth McConkey, Towards the Sun … 2021 Paul Holberton Publishing, pp. 152-171).

Closer at hand, the neighbouring hillside, dotted with houses, became a source of constant fascination for the painter. The green slope falling away into a valley presented as much of a challenge as the ever-changing sky. Its height and depth, a flank of verdant pastures and private gardens, tested him on numerous occasions. Moving slightly to left or right revealed secluded houses of different neighbours or the rooftops on the fringes of the city. From there the eye proceeded, with a clear aerial view, beyond it to the distant horizon. In later years he could observe new villas dotting the hillside as the city expanded, while to his immediate left, the hill fell steeply away behind him to his favourite secluded beaches, and in front, beyond the unseen defile that took visitors to the shore, lay hidden the white city of Tangier.

Kenneth McConkey