Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.H.A., R.S.A. 1856-1941

The sitter, and thence by descent, whence sold Christie’s,12 November 1976, lot 94;
Private Collection

Dublin, Irish International Exhibition, 1907, no. 53;
London, Goupil Gallery, John Lavery RSA, RHA, June 1908, no.40;
Venice, IX Biennale, Monstra Individuale di John Lavery RSA, RHA, 1910, no.8.

ACR Carter, ‘Recent Work by Mr Lavery’, The Art Journal, 1908, p. 234, illustrated p.235;
The Times, 18 June 1908, p. 19;
Walter Shaw Sparrow, John Lavery and his Work, n.d. 1911 (Kegan Paul, Trubner, Trench and Co), pp.144-5, 187, 192, illustrated opposite p. 140;
A Stodart Walker, ‘The Art of John Lavery, RSA, ARA etc’, The Studio, vol 62, June 1914, p. 4, illustrated p.6;
Kenneth McConkey, Sir John Lavery, Canongate 1993, p. 114, fig. 135.

In December 1908, six months after Lady Evelyn Farquhar was first exhibited, Selwyn Brinton addressed the question of art and fashion. The more contemporary a dress design, the more dated a portrait may seem in years to come. The problem was exacerbated if the dress was distinctive in its design and construction. Surveying John Lavery’s recent work, Brinton posed this question. The painter’s reply contained an obvious truth:

‘The artist who can depict the fashion of his day that it shall be of his day, and yet for all time, and the picture a thing of beauty, has solved the problem’ (Lavery quoted in Selwyn Brinton, ‘Recent Paintings by John Lavery, RSA, RHA’, The Studio, vol 45, 1908, p. 176).

Brinton got the message – the present instantly became the past and the painter’s job was to take from it that which would endure. Velazquez had done this in spite of the ‘hideous hoops of Spanish costume’. Lavery believed that contemporary dress provided opportunities for the astute portraitist, which had not been available in earlier times. The issue was not that Brinton and he were living through times of visual austerity, it was more to do with the painter’s capacity to draw from the sitter, those qualities which, in Henry James’ terms, ‘satisfy’, ‘enshrine’ and ‘perpetuate’ (Henry James writing to Mrs Mahlon Sands in 1894, quoted in Kenneth McConkey, Memory and Desire, British and Irish painting at the turn of the Twetieth Century, Ashgate 2002, p. 94). Faced with Lady Evelyn Farquhar, a few months earlier, one of Brinton’s rival reviewers hailed the canvas as ‘the very coherence of portraiture’ (ACR Carter, ‘Recent Work by Mr Lavery’, The Art Journal, 1908, p. 234).

The picture’s origin dates from 1903 when the fifth Earl of Donoughmore commissioned his portrait from Lavery. The Donoughmores were Irish landowners with estates in Kilkenny and the title was created in 1800. The fifth Earl, the sitter’s father, was a supporter of Home Rule for Ireland and spoke on its behalf in the House of Lords in 1893, following the demise of Parnell. Donoughmore’s portrait was regarded as a success when shown at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1904. Donoughmore then called upon Lavery to paint a double portrait of his daughters, both of whom were about to be married. The Ladies Norah and Evelyn Hely-Hutchinson, known as The Sisters, (fig 1) quickly acquired a word-of-mouth reputation as one of Lavery’s most celebrated canvases to date. Comparisons with Sargent’s Ena and Betty Wertheimer, 1901 (Tate Britain) point to Lavery’s Whistlerian reserve, to his concern for abstract arrangement and colour harmony, and to his deliberate elimination of extraneous detail. Although not exhibited until 1910, The Sisters marked a turning point and further Donoughmore commissions followed. A single portrait of Lady Norah Brassey was painted in 1905 around the time of her sister Evelyn’s marriage to Captain Francis Douglas Farquhar in April 1905. In the following summer, after the birth of their daughter Norah, Captain Farquhar then commissioned his wife’s portrait, the present canvas. Farquhar, who had attained the rank of Colonel by the outbreak of the war, was killed in action in 1915 and was awarded the DSO. After eight years as a widow, Lady Evelyn remarried in 1923 to Sir Dougal Orme Malcolm KCMG of Poltalloch. She died in 1966.

In staging the portrait sittings for Lady Evelyn, Lavery deliberately simplified. A giltwood bergère and side table with white flowers were placed against a neutral backdrop. No engaging clutter detracted from the radiant presence of the sitter. She sits on the edge of the chair, confidently engaging the spectator and holding a pale blue sunshade which picks out the ribbon details of her silk and chiffon dress. A plumed hat with a dark veil of the type made famous by ‘Gibson’ girls, frames the face and suggests a young woman whose sophisticated fashion sense led her to avoid the kind of over-statement of which the painter greatly disapproved. If we interpret Lavery’s remarks, this was not enough of itself. Poise, tone, shape and space were the painter’s métier – the components of ‘treatment’ and ‘arrangement’, the key expressions in the consideration of Lady Evelyn’s image – were crucial. Walter Shaw Sparrow sensed this when he penned his monograph on Lavery in 1911. The portrait was, he wrote, ‘a rapid victory over an arrangement which might have been nothing more than a dextrous display of virtuosoship’. What might seem ‘obvious contrasts of colour’ were handled with ‘a subtle refinement that never falters, and the sitter, in the atmosphere of her delicate fine nature, is at once classic and modern’ (Walter Shaw Sparrow, John Lavery and his Work, 1911, pp. 144-5).

Shaw Sparrow was essentially confirming the views of earlier writers. After its completion, the picture was sent to Dublin for the Irish International exhibition in 1907 and returned to form the centre-piece of Lavery’s exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in the summer of 1908.

ACR Carter, writing about this show noted,

'Obviously he wishes us to recognize his Lady Evelyn Farquhar as a tour de force. This is the very coherence of portraiture. In its swift passage over the canvas the eye takes in the shimmering vision immediately as a whole. Analytically one may easily label the components of the recipe, their weight and balance. It is not necessary’ (A.C.R. Carter, ‘Recent Work by Mr Lavery’, The Art Journal, 1908, p. 234).

Carter was echoing the opinion of the reviewer in The Times who wrote,

‘The principal portrait is the very successful full length of Lady Evelyn Farquhar, in a white dress with a black straw hat; a charming picture in every way, in which the dexterous introduction of the blue parasol and the pot of white lilac completes the delicate colour-scheme in a most harmonious manner’ (The Times, 18 June 1908, p. 19).

Elements of the composition, such as the vase of flowers had been deployed to great effect in the portrait of Miss Mary Burrell, 1894 (Fig 2, Burrell Collection, Glasgow), while the subtle play of whites in the dress recall Printemps, 1904 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). However it was natural elegance, expressed in the way a hand, like that of an Infanta, falls over the arm of a giltwood chair, that distinguishes Lady Evelyn’s portrait from the flashy exhibition-piece portraits of Lavery’s competitors. Essentially, it refers to his much admired La Dame aux Perles, 1900 (fig 3, Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane) which had been shown at the Irish Art exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery in 1904. It was the French critic, Camille Mauclair who expressed this most clearly, declaring that Lavery’s art had nothing to do with the ‘affectations and bravura’ of the contemporary school, ‘each year his work serves as a silent lesson, the lesson taught by an art based upon a profound intelligence, while remaining essentially pictorial and independent of literary mélange’ (Camille Mauclair, ‘John Lavery’, L'Art et les Artistes, col 2, 1905, p. 10). 

Kenneth McConkey