By the end of 1906, John Lavery had acquired a winter retreat on Mount Washington, a hill to the west of the Medina at Tangier. Known as Dar el Midfah, or ‘the house of the cannon’, it took its name from an ancient rusty cannon in the hilltop garden in which Lavery constructed his studio. From then until the outbreak of war, around four months of every year were spent in his eerie overlooking the surrounding countryside and the Straits of Gibraltar. The only exception to this annual pilgrimage was in 1913 when he was commissioned to paint the Royal Family (National Portrait Gallery, London).

Having documented its streets, marketplaces and surrounding shores, Lavery became fascinated by the landscapes around what travellers referred to as ‘the white city’. As in Evening, Tangier, 1907 (Birmingham Museums Trust), the flat roof of his villa provided an ideal viewing platform.

From here he could overlook his neighbours and note the slow encroachment of buildings in the Marshan district on the opposite hilltop, swiftly indicated on the left of the present oil sketch. Before the French invasion of Morocco in 1912, the Basha of Tangier had been selling plots of land to foreigners, without the Sultan’s permission.

Ever-changing skies were a consistent feature of Lavery’s small housetop studies, and he was particularly attracted, as here, to the colours of evening. These, reflected in the deep fertile valley that lay between his house and the city, are indicated in confident brushwork that takes the eye to the blue foothills of the Riff mountains in the distance. This was a moment of calm in the early months of 1914 that would not be repeated. Only one further visit to the ‘white city’ was made in 1920. After it Dar el Midfah was sold, and the artist’s attentions shifted to the Riviera.

Professor Kenneth McConkey