Studio: international art (27.1903)

John Lavery

It cannot be denied that the above hard, dry
facts emphasise the contention as to the hopeless
condition of mismanagement—to use a mildly in-
adequate term—of British art.

Again, the critical appreciation on the Continent
of Lavery's art goes to show how emancipated
foreign criticism is in comparison with our own.
The critics of the Continent are loud in Lavery's
praise, though little of real moment has been
said regarding him by his own countrymen. One
French critic has gone so far as to say that his
portraits, seen at a recent Salon, were " les meilleurs,
les plus nerveux et les plus fins portraits de ce Salon."

It may be well to give here the dates of the
pictures representative of Lavery's work accom-
panying these articles. The Bridge of Gres (1883),
A Tennis Party (1886), A Portrait Sketch of Mr.
James Guthrie (1886), Mother and Son (1886),
Croquet: A Portrait Group (1890), Miss M. B.
(1891), A Lady in Black (1892), Father and
Daughter (1897), Nora (1897), Portrait of James
Fitzmaurice Kelly, Esq. (1898), A Lady in Black,
No. LI. (1898), La Dame aux Perles (1900),
Fraulein Hertha von G. (1900), and The Violin
Player (1901). Black and Grey and Her First
Communion, a delightful representation of the
artist's winsome little daughter, are quite recent
works.

The limits of space will not allow me, nor do I
consider, for reasons already stated, that it is neces-
sary, to enter into any minute or detailed writing,
descriptive or critical, of Mr. Lavery's respective
productions. The illustrations accompanying the
text speak more eloquently than I can speak.
Who can look at his portraits, especially at his
portrait groups, Mother and Son, Mrs. Spoltiswoode
and Child, and particularly that triumph of suc-
cessful characterisation, the picture of the artist
himself seated at the back of his little daughter,
without recognising that here is a portraitist worthy
to rank with the great portrait painters of old?
Mr. Lavery's little girl is seen again in Her First
Communion. The other day I was brought face
to face with the artist's quite recent productions,
these included a sympathetic portrait of Lady
Hamilton, portraits of the Hon. Mrs. Burrell and
Mrs. Atherlon, A Lady on Horseback, and an
extremely seductive portrait study, Black and
Grey, which has much of the tenderness and
grace of a Romney.

It is, of course, mainly to portraiture that Lavery,
in recent years, has devoted his energies. His
singular success in this branch of art has placed
him in the front rank of European portraitists.
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The sterner qualities of manhood are as faithfully
delineated as the charm and beauty of graceful
womanhood — witness his R. B. Cuninghame
Graham, Esq., J. Fitzmaurice Kelly, Esq., and the
picture of himself. He paints women and children
not merely as a master of his craft, but with that
underlying sentiment of chivalry and devotion
which belongs to knight-errantry. He is no less
successful in depicting old age. Mr. Whistler,
during one of several memorable conversations I
had with him some years ago, in talking of the
scope and limits of artistic expression in portraiture,
summed up the matter by roundly declaring that
portrait-painting afforded as wide a latitude for
aesthetic treatment as any other expression of the
artistic faculty. On this question it was interesting
to hear Mr. Lavery's views. He holds that the
artist has licence and prerogative to treat his sitter
as he would treat a model, to this extent: he is
entitled to seize upon and give prominence to
those points which in form and colour suggest to
him an attractive and interesting pictorial idea, and
that, while the essential facts and characteristics
which would enable a third person to recognise
immediately the sitter in the picture must be
preserved, the painter is entirely justified—further,
that no portrait can be a work of art otherwise—
in treating his sitter subjectively, and infusing into
his presentment his own artistic individuality. As
to this, if space allowed, much might be written.
It will suffice to say here that Lavery's portraits
exhibit that happy equipoise between subjected
and objective treatment which, to my mind, marks
all the highest achievements in modern portraiture.
Of the past in this connection it is impossible
to speak definitely. It will be obvious, however,
from what has already been written, that John
Lavery is not a man of prescribed or narrow views.
It is so far to the credit of Glasgow that in the
case of Lavery, and the Glasgow School of painters
generally, it has risen entirely superior to the
dominance of the clique which mismanages art
in the metropolis of the Empire, and that it
has absolved itself of the reproach contained in
the Scriptural aphorism concerning a prophet in his
own city. In 1888, Mr. Lavery was commissioned
to paint a large canvas commemorative of the State
Visit of Her Majesty to the Glasgow Exhibition.
This picture, though by no means a mere machine,
as such pictures are wont to be, and in the very
nature of things must in a measure be, is, of course,
not to be taken as representing Lavery at his best.
The rapid sketch of the function which I saw the
other day in the artist's studio is more valuable