Beschreibung:

STUDY FOR A MOORISH DANCE, 1892 Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941)
Signature: signed, dated and inscribed with title lower right; with James Connell & Sons [Glasgow] label on reverse; with Belfast Art Gallery and Museum label on reverse inscribed with title, and owner's details [Saml. E. Thompson, Edenderry House, Woodvale Road, B Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 9½ x 7½in. (24.13 x 19.05cm) Provenance: with James Connell and Sons, Glasgow; to Samuel E Thompson, Edenderry House, Woodvale Road, Belfast, by 1921 (£75); Thence by descent; Kennedy Wolfenden & Co. Ltd., Dunadry Inn, Co. Antrim, 15 May 1984, lot 64; Private collection Exhibited: Literature: Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery A Painter and his World, Atelier Books, 2010, p.220 (note 63) S.E. Thompson was a House, Land, and Estate Agent, Property Broker, and Valuer of 63 Donegall Street with a home address at Edenderry House, Woodvale Road. For several years in the late 1880s, John La... avery had been hearing from his close friends, Joseph Crawhall and Arthur Melville about the attractions of Tangier. Work commitments, namely the large commemorative oil painting of Queen Victoria’s visit to the Glasgow International Exhibition in 1888, intervened before he was able to escape in January 1891. From the moment he arrived in the city known to habitués as ‘La Blanca’, those previous two years of confinement to the studio, were set aside and an immediate sense of liberation prevailed as he walked up to the Kasbah. Tangier, glistening in the sunlight, was a melting pot for different racial types – Berbers, Tauregs and Nubians as well as European émigrés of every stripe.1 In its narrow streets at dusk when lanterns were lit after the final call to prayer, one would often hear the strains of Arab music drifting across the flat rooftops. Such was the spell cast by this exotic city that a single visit was not enough and Lavery resolved to return the following winter. On this second occasion his major project was the depiction of a Moorish dance – a subject favoured by French Orientalists such as Delacroix, Gérôme and Benjamin-Constant. His working methods were simple. Where they constructed their harem scenes from models and bric-a-brac in Paris studios, his preparatory works would be painted on-the-spot. A series of small studies in oil and watercolour would inform the final composition destined for the Royal Academy the following year (fig 1), and the present instance is one of these. These swift oil sketches of Berber and Nubian heads, individual musicians, the foreground dancer, and various attempts at the overall arrangement of figures made an interesting repository. They passed into small exhibitions in Glasgow or in some cases were given to friends.2 The final exhibition-piece fared less well, and was returned to the artist unsold. After approximately ten years, when he was returning regularly to La Blanca, Lavery reduced its size and repainted it almost entirely.3 We therefore rely on pictures like the present one to give us a fuller sense of Lavery’s experience and thinking during the 1892 visit. At this point, vivid colour and remarkable spontaneity alone carry the germ of the idea that emanates from crouching figures who in turn produce the unique sound of an extraordinary city. Prof. Kenneth McConkey August 2017 1 For a fuller account of Lavery’s long relationship with Tangier, see Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery A Painter and his World, 2010, (Atelier Books). 2 Two for instance, were given to fellow painter, Alfred East whose London studio Lavery borrowed during his absence in 1896. 3 McConkey, 2010, pp. 60-2, 220 (note 63) more