• Kenneth McConkey
  

• LAVERY, Sir John
  

• 
  Autumn 2023
  Volume 40. No. 3

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John Lavery, it seems, was forever moving on, taking us from Fontainebleau forest glades in the early 1880s to a Palm Springs pergola in the late 1930s, with much else in between. There is the impression of a restless individual, never happier than when there was a boat or train to catch, and never satisfied until he had found something new to paint. He is, at times, difficult to keep up with. An artist ‘on location’ rather than in situ, his energy seems boundless and, given that he had an active career spanning over sixty years, it can be confidently claimed that his full story will never be told.
Lavery functioned as much in the street as in the studio, oblivious to the crowd that sometimes gathered at his elbow. He was, on these occasions, a sideshow for passers-by, a public performer like the snake charmer in the souk, the tennis player on the court or the pilgrim at the shrine. ‘Beauty’ was not confined to the ‘throne’ in the artist’s studio: it must be sought in spaces that were not especially attractive. He was, of course, not alone in the belief that the rarefied act of picture-making needed to be exposed to the rough and tumble of everyday life, and one of his earliest studies reveals a fellow student engaged as a street performer, with Lavery as his only audience (Fig 3). Watching others struggle over what was before them was an act of empathy in which Lavery essentially saw himself. In this case, not possessing a white sketching umbrella, his subject found a place in the shade to avoid the sun’s glare and worked as quickly as he could, blocking in the shapes and sharpening the contours while the shadows lengthened.

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