International studio (53.1914)

on loan from the Senate House, Brussels, the
National and Modern Galleries of Dublin, the
Manchester Art Gallery, the Belfast Corpora-
tion Gallery and Girton College, Cambridge. The
rest of the canvases are chiefly from private
collections and include many of the portraits which
made the reputation of the painter, such as the
Miss Mary Burrell (1891), the Sisters (1891-92),
Lady Norah Hely-Hutchinson (1905), and Lady
Evelyn Farquhar (1906). The collection also in-
cludes The Night after Langside — the famous
canvas over which Mr. Lavery spent ten years, and
Dawn after Langside lent by Mr. James Mylne, two
pictures alone which might have jnade a reputation
sufficient for any man.
In studying some of
these canvases what strikes
us most is how well Mr.
Lavery has gauged the
effect of time. Such a pic¬
ture as The Rocking Chair
from the Diploma Gallery,
Edinburgh, painted twenty-
two years ago, might have
been finished yesterday,
the paint is so fresh and
glowing, and so far as we
have been able to examine
the works of the past, we
have not discovered one
example of the artist’s work
that has not improved “ in
the keeping.” The fact
may be useful to those of
our moderns who imagine
that it is necessary to
practise some unusual
method of painting, some
laying on of paint which is
to earn the condemnation
of the present at the price
of the appreciation of the
future. So long as a man
understands the medium in
which he works, so long as
he knows what paint is
likely to become under the
processes of time, there
seems no need for him to
be greatly concerned about
the future. None of Mr.
Lavery’s early canvases
were labelled “This picture
is intended for thirty or fifty
4

years hence.” The painter did not go about apolo-
gising to his critics that he painted for the future and
not for the present. Throughout his career Mr.
Lavery never apologised at all. He simply did
what he knew and left it at that. So to-day we
glory in that masterpiece The Lady with the
Pearls from The Modern Gallery in Dublin,
representing the painter more consummately
perhaps than any other canvas, as the critics did
when it was first exhibited.
There are some things that Mr. Lavery cannot
achieve, though of all living craftsmen in paint to
none can be applied more honestly the statement
made by one of his colleagues that “ there is very
little he cannot do.” A distinguished contemporary


“JAPANESE SWITZERLAND” (1912)

BY JOHN I.AVERV, R.S.A., A.R.A.