Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A.

Hirschl & Adler Galleries inc., New York

The colours of the sitter's face are fresher and less red than the illustration suggests. The canavs is lined. There are some very feint fine lines of surface craquelure scattered to the background, along the bottom edge and to the sitter's beard otherwise in good overall condition. Under ultraviolet light, there are some very fine lines of retouching by the sitter's left eye and to his chin and three further fine lines of retouching approx 2in. long in the bottom left quadrant, running along the bottom left edge. There are some further scattered areas which flouresce however, these appear to be darker pigments in the paint and are the artist's hand. Held in a plaster gilt frame.
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In November 1881 Lavery arrived in Paris and registered at the ateliers of Julian and Colarossi. The former was smoky, hot and over-crowded, and had a large contingent of British and American students. Among them was Gaines Ruger Donoho, a young man who originally hailed from Mississippi, but was probably of Irish descent. It is likely that he and Lavery met at this time, and he may have been instrumental in persuading the painter to make his first expedition to Grez-sur-Loing in the summer of 1883. This pretty village, on the fringe of the Forest of Fontainebleau had been the haunt of art students since it was first discovered by a group of pupils of Carolus Duran in 1875. It quickly became legendary as a result of the paintings produced there and through one of Robert Louis Stevenson's early essays. Stevenson described it as 'a place worthy of some praise'. It contained 'an old bridge, an old castle in ruin, and a quaint old church', but its principal asset was the river, 'clear and deep and full of reeds and floating lilies' (R.L. Stevenson, 'Forest Notes' (1876), quoted in Essays of Travel, 1912, Chatto and Windus, p. 148). In this idyllic setting, Lavery's work developed quickly. He painted a magical series of small pictures of the hotel garden - chiefly The Hotel Chevillon, (fig. 1) and A Grey Summer's Day, Grez - before embarking upon what was to be his internationally acclaimed masterpiece, The Bridge at Grez (Private Collection).

The appearance of the present portrait of Donoho enables us to identify the male figure wearing a pale grey jacket who appears in The Hotel Chevillon along with the Irish painter, Frank O'Meara. It seems likely that the man in back view, standing by the water's edge in A Grey Summer's Day, Grez, is also Donoho. Photographs in the Archives of American Art (fig. 2) indicate that like the other artist-inhabitants of the village, Donoho regularly borrowed one of the 'shallops' or punts, moored at the bottom of the Chevillon's garden. It may well be the case that Lavery painted his American friend's portrait as a 'thank you' for his support. Like his Self-Portrait, 1886 (fig. 3), the present work indicates that with his trimmed ginger beard, the pipe-smoking Donoho cut a striking figure. As with his rustic subjects, Lavery's Donoho is painted broadly in a characteristic 'square brush' style, common at the period.  

Gaines Ruger Donoho (1857-1916) was born at Church Hill, Mississippi. After the death of his father in the Civil War, his mother and he moved to Washington DC where he was employed as an architectural draughtsman in 1876. He joined the Art Students League under William Merritt Chase in November 1879 and after a year went to Paris to enrol at the atelier Julian.  His companions were Alexander Harrison, Willard Metcalf and John Twachtman - artists who would become leading American Impressionists. Around 1880, Donoho went on painting forays in the forest of Fontainebleau and within the next year or so he, like Harrison and Metcalf, discovered the charm of Grez-sur-Loing. By this stage, with works like La Marcellerie, 1882 (Coll. Brooklyn Museum), he was achieving success at the Salon and for the next four years he showed regularly and retained his contacts with other Julian students. He and Lavery showed broadly comparable works in 1884 - one depicting a shepherd, the other a goatherd.

In 1887 Donoho returned to New York where he exhibited at the Society of American Artists and the National Academy of Design. In 1889 he was awarded a silver medal in the Exposition Universelle for La Marcellerie. Further awards followed at the Columbian Exhibition, Chicago, the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Donoho remained a central figure in the New York art world throughout the nineties, his style recalling that of his friend, Childe Hassam. During the early years of the century he revisited Europe, and in his later years painted the flower gardens of East Hampton.

Kenneth McConkey