Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.H.A., R.S.A. 1856-1941

The present canvas is a sketch for one of Lavery’s most highly regarded works. When it was exhibited in 1914 at the painter’s large retrospective at the Grosvenor Galleries, In Morocco, 1912 (fig 1, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne) was hailed by A Stodart Walker as the ‘veritable apotheosis of all he feels, knows and thinks of life and colour in Tangier’ (A Stodart Walker, ‘The Art of John Lavery, RSA, ARA etc’, The Studio, vol 62, June 1914, p. 14). The picture shows the painter’s second wife, Hazel Lavery, in Arab costume, her daughter, Alice Trudeau, then aged seven or eight, astride her Arab horse, Lily-Beau, and a Berber child, here identified as Hamid, holding a greyhound by its collar (in the final version, the Moorish child is named Ben Ali Rabbati). Apart from the obvious changes made to Hazel Lavery’s pose, the background foliage has been replaced by a white garden wall, a fruit tree and deep blue sky – the ‘life and colour of Tangier’. Lavery had been au fait with the city since his first visit in the early months of 1891. He returned on several occasions during the next twelve years before purchasing his famed retreat in the hills within easy reach of the city. He worked incessantly, recording all aspects of expatriate life, on annual visits lasting up to four months. Despite persistent disputes over control of this strategically important fortified port - a number of Lavery’s friends were kidnapped and ransomed by the brutal warlord, El Raisuli – in his work, the painter remained oblivious to political tensions. Even after General Lyautey’s intervention in 1912, when Morocco became a French protectorate, travelling beyond the immediate environs of the city risked being captured by the Berber Kaids and none of these concerns impinged upon what Walker regarded as ‘a fitting monument for his long artistic career and an earnest of what we may expect in the future’ (Stodart Walker, ibid., p. 14).

Stodart Walker sensed the taking stock that accompanied the important changes in the painter’s life during the previous five years. The arrival of Hazel and Alice, Eileen Lavery’s teenage years, her engagement and marriage in 1913, came on the heels of his final acceptance by the Academy and the commission to paint the Royal Family. All made the escape to Tangier in 1912 a moment of liberation that must have filtered intuitively into the freedom and vitality of the Sketch for ‘In Morocco’. The writer mused upon the painting of the horse, which, along with that in The Amazon (fig 2, Ulster Museum, Belfast) proved that Lavery had side-stepped the ‘dead formalism’ of animal painting. We could go further and say that the resplendent Lily-Beau in the sketch and finished painting echoes the triumphalism of some of Delacroix’s Moroccan scenes, nearly a century earlier. The comparison with Muley Abd-ar-Rhaman, Sultan of Morocco leaving his Palace at Meknes, (The Sultan of Morocco and his Entourage), (1845, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse) becomes less fanciful when we consider Delacroix’s working methods and his use of sketches which are no more than rough compositional ideas. Collectors often favoured these imaginative works because they made up for the lack of surface detail in energy and spontaneity.

In a vital way, Sketch for ‘In Morocco’ illustrates Lavery’s thinking process. If Delacroix’s Sultan was not in his mind, the equestrian portraits of Idonia La Primaudaye, RB Cunninghame Graham and Eileen Lavery established his claim to the subject. Two such pictures by Velazquez had been copied in the Prado in 1892. The boy with the greyhound in the present work, may well have been inspired by recollections of the page with hounds in the foreground of Velazquez’s Philip IV hunting wild boar, 1636-8 (National Gallery, London). Nevertheless, while these elements remain unchanged from sketch to finished picture, the most important alteration was made to the figure of Hazel. Her animated pose and western costume in the Sketch has been replaced for the final version, in which she stands facing the spectator, wearing a thawb and keffiyeh, and carrying a large parasol. Then, as now, it was not unusual for western travelers to adopt Arab dress, although this is the only case of its kind associated with Hazel Lavery.

In Morocco should be grouped with The Artist’s Studio, 1910-12 (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) as an ambitious celebratory canvas which brings Lavery’s family into a central position in his work and the Sketch for ‘In Morocco’ is directly equivalent to that produced for the Dublin painting. In its freshness, it is indeed the distillation of the ‘life and colour of Tangier’.

Kenneth McConkey