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

After the completion of The State Visit of Queen Victoria to the International Exhibition, Glasgow, 1888, (Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum) Lavery set off for Tangier early in January 1891. He seems to have gone directly to the city via Gibraltar, by P&O Liner. He remained there for over two months, returning through Spain in March. Prior to his departure he had arranged two London exhibitions – one of the State Visit, and the other of his more recent work, a substantial portion of which was the product of the North African sojourn.

The sights, sounds and smells of Tangier immediately captivated the painter. Although he painted in the Kasbah and on the rooftop of the Continental Hotel, it was the Soko that claimed most of his attention. In this market place, traders pitched their tents and tethered their camels, horses and goats. The customs and conventions of this ancient port were unlike anything Lavery had ever experienced. On one occasion he stood in the crowd and sketched the snake charmers for what became one of the centre-pieces of the Goupil Gallery show.

The present work shares the dry, chalky pigment of this canvas, but where The Snake Charmers is wayside theatre, The Soko sweeps the crowded square, looks up to the Kasbah and catches a glimpse of the glistening Straits beyond. This work was to be the prototype for other renderings of the market place in 1907 and 1920. In each of these instances, Lavery positions himself on the south-eastern side of the Soko, where, in the present canvas, the shade of buildings, casts shadows across the foreground, enabling the artist to note the tonal transitions in the scene before his eyes. In its marquetry of shapes, Lavery’s borrows something from the Arab watercolours of Arthur Melville, develops it and passes it on to the buccaneer and slave trade canvases of Frank Brangwyn. John Forbes-White who wrote the introduction to the Goupil exhibition catalogue was particularly enamoured with these swift studies. He wrote that they were ‘intensely decorative as well as true … artistic as well as real’;‘…the numerous studies at Tangier show broadly and simply [that] these truths are felt in the glowing sunshine and cool shade of the narrow streets … However slight it may be the work charms from its freshness and sweetness. If it makes a demand on our intelligence and sympathy, it is a demand, the yielding of which, gives a zest to our enjoyment (Forbes-White, ‘Note’, Pictures by John Lavery, exh. cat., Goupil Gallery, 1891, pp. 7-8).

Kenneth McConkey