SIR JOHN LAVERY, R.A., R.H.A., R.S.A. 1856-1941

T.R. Ronaldson Esq., MD;
Sale, Sotheby's London, 21st October 1970, lot 61;
Fine Art Society, London, 1971;
Private Collection

Glasgow, Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, 1886, no.254 (as Convalescence;
London, Royal Society of British Artists, Summer Exhibition, 1887, no.173 (as Convalescence);
Paris, 1889 (?);
Glasgow, Scottish Exhibition, 1911 (lent by TM Ronaldson MD);
London, Grosvenor Gallery, A Retrospective Exhibition of the Works of John Lavery, 1880-1914, 1914, no.138 (as Convalescent, lent by TM Ronaldson MD)

Walter Shaw Sparrow, John Lavery and his Work, 1911, pp. 73, 172;
Kenneth McConkey, Sir John Lavery RA, 1856-1941, exh. cat., Ulster Museum, Belfast and Fine Art Society, London 1984, p.31;
Kenneth McConkey, Sir John Lavery, Edinburgh 1993, p.40 (fig. 39)

In the early summer of 1885, before he began painting The Tennis Party, (Aberdeen Art Gallery), John Lavery returned to a favourite setting - an orchard by a river - and depicted figures under a thick canopy of blossom in sunlight. A girl sits on the grass reading, while her companion, wrapped in a shawl, sinks back into pillows on a wicker chair. Such a scene was enchanting. It carried ideas of filial loyalty alongside notions of health restored by the natural world. This may be a dutiful daughter reading to a relative, perhaps her mother. As industrial cities like Glasgow rapidly expanded in the nineteenth century, public health issues were hotly debated and while Lavery is unlikely to have thought deeply about these matters, he would have been generally aware of the popularity of images which struck the powerful relationship between nature newly in flower, and humanity revived. The significance of Pre-Raphaelite maidens resting in rose bowers, in Burne-Jones and Rossetti, to an earlier generation of painters and collectors, had not been lost. The secret, scented garden was associated with health and beauty. In 1885, listening to the gentle stream, inhaling the freshness of nature reborn and basking in the sun’s heat, there was in Convalescence (In the Apple Orchard), a feast for the senses.

The present work, originally entitled Convalescence, was borrowed from its owner in 1914 for Lavery’s retrospective exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery, London, where the title was given as The Convalescent. It has sometimes been confused with Summertime (unlocated), Lavery’s second Royal Society of British Artists exhibit of 1887. By the 1980s, when it was reproduced by Elgin Court Designs, it had acquired the title In the Apple Orchard. To avoid confusion, both titles are given here.

A year before Convalescence while he was working at Grez-sur-Loing, Lavery painted in the garden at the rear of his hotel, overlooking the river. The scene on this occasion included a washerwoman and her daughter, talking to a passing boatman, painted en plein air on a large square canvas, during the summer months. Before embarking on this ambitious work, he had produced a smaller, more spontaneous version, containing the traces of cherry blossom, largely omitted the exhibition-piece. Shown in Paisley and Glasgow at the beginning of 1885 entitled, On the Loing: An Afternoon Chat, this second, large canvas was retained by the artist and later donated to Belfast Art Gallery in 1929, where it is known as Under the Cherry Tree (Fig 1, Ulster Museum, Belfast). The significance of these two works lay more in the setting they portray than in their anecdotal subject matter. Lavery was less committed to peasant themes than his fellow-traveller