Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A.

Dr. Alexander Hamilton Rice and Mrs. Eleanore Elkins Widener Rice, New York (acquired directly from the artist in 1926)
Thence by descent to the present owners

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting is in what appears to be its original frame. The canvas has never been removed from its original stretcher and the painting has most likely never been cleaned. The paint layer is dirty but there appear to be no restorations or damages. The paint layer could be cleaned, which would brighten the palette but it could also be presented as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

In October 1926 The Art News alerted its readers to a display of "charmingly intimate little paintings," known as "portrait interiors" that the Irish painter Sir John Lavery hoped to show at the Duveen Galleries on Fifth Avenue at the end of November. This was a choice selection from his recent successful London exhibition at the Leicester Galleries and they:

"evidence an unusual dexterity in the suggestion of atmosphere and are painted with the insight of one who comes to them, not as an outsider, but as one who, having an entrée to them, understands to the full, their essential character... He can paint fine furniture and objets de vertu with as excellent an appreciation of their points as any one living, and ... can weld them into one decorative whole..."¹

This small retrospective of thirty-five works contained Auguste Rodin, lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Ratification of the Irish Treaty in the House of Lords, lent by Glasgow City Art Gallery, and a fine study for his group portrait of the Royal Family in Buckingham Palace, lent by Belfast City Art Gallery. Lavery and Duveen set out to impress. The artist, his wife, Hazel, her daughter Alice, their maid and valet set sail from Southampton on the RMS Mauretania to attend the private viewing in New York, and remained in the United States until the following March, travelling to Boston with the exhibition.² Lavery could not afford to slip unnoticed into the city. "You must appear as though money were no object", a friend told him, and he was soon installed at the Ambassador Hotel overlooking Central Park.³ The Art News noted that prior to his arrival a number of 'portrait interior' commissions had already been arranged. He painted views of the park, fifteen portraits of millionaires – he informed a newspaper reporter that, in America "one needed to be a millionaire many times over before one counted ..." – and at least five "portrait interiors".⁴ As the envious and dyspeptic Joseph Pennell grudgingly conceded, "his [Lavery's] idea of doing the millionaires surrounded by their millions was not bad."⁵

Among these pictures were The Library, 58 East 68^th Street, built for Harold Pratt, two pictures of Harbor Hill, the Mackay house on Long Island, and the present interiors of 901 Fifth Avenue, the home of the distinguished Amazon explorer, Dr Alexander Hamilton Rice, (1875-1956). A Harvard graduate who trained at the Royal Geographic Society in London, Rice made seven expeditions exploring the Amazon basin, and in one instance, fought 'a running four day battle against cannibals'. Despite these adventures, "Dr Rice was as much at home in the elegant swirl of Newport society as in the steaming jungles of Brazil".⁶

In 1915 he married Eleanore Elkins Widener (1861-1937), the widow of George Dunton Widener. Returning from Europe in 1912 with their son, Harry, the Wideners embarked upon the Titanic. Limited lifeboat space meant that only Eleanore and her maid survived the disaster. She was nevertheless related through marriage to the great Widener dynasty; her brother-in-law, Joseph, was one of the original benefactors of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. In addition to the Wideners' associations with other members of Philadelphia, New York, and Newport society, the architect Horace Trumbauer, dealer-decorators André Carlhian of Maison Carlhian and Joseph Duveen of Duveen Brothers were crucial in the development of Eleanore's collecting habits and tastes. While married to Widener, Eleanore employed Trumbauer to construct a large mansion in Newport, named Miramar.  Later, as Eleanore rose to the apex of society, she and Dr. Rice again contracted Trumbauer to build a New York City townhouse at 901 Fifth Avenue (completed in 1924), emulating a Parisian hôtel particulier. Carlhian and Duveen selected items and placed them throughout her homes, but not without the input of Eleanore who, by the end of 1925, had amassed a collection of fine French eighteenth-century furniture, tapestries, and porcelain, along with significant works previously belonging to the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection and Alfred de Rothschild. 

Although Eleanore's homes contained fine and expensive eighteenth-century French furniture, she used these places as residences; therefore, the furniture and furnishings had to be functional as well as decorative. In New York, the main salon served more as Eleanore's drawing room than a formal ballroom, despite being titled "Salon" on the initial floor plans and later dubbed the "Louis XVI Salon." Moreover, this room displayed Eleanore's distinguished collection of eighteenth-century French furniture and furnishings, creating a museum-like atmosphere. Symmetry played an important role; many pieces chosen by Duveen for the Louis XVI salon came in pairs, or Duveen sought to find pieces matching those previously owned. Not all items incorporated into the Louis XVI decorative scheme were antique. To complement Eleanore's period furniture and keep a unified decorative vision, Carlhian constructed Louis XVI style boiseries (decorative, carved wood panelling), outlining the salon, and provided some contemporary seating furniture to frame the antique textiles while other period items were reinforced or rebuilt to withstand daily heavy use. Another equally impressive room, in a contrasting style, was the library known as the Gothic Room (see lot 72).⁷  Similar to the designs for Standford White's Harbor Hill, the Rice's Gothic Room consisted of a panelled baronial hall, complete with inglenook fireplace and hung with guidons, hunting trophies and armour--a common feature of American country houses of the period, imitating English arts and crafts interiors.

Lavery's viewpoint in The Salon, 901 Fifth Avenue, is similar to that in his celebrated depiction of The Double Cube Room, Wilton, 1920, his Royal Academy diploma picture. Yet this was not Wilton, but the home of Dr.and Mrs. Rice. It was not in the midst of the rolling Sussex landscape but in the centre of Manhattan. Despite the fact that these rooms were in the heart of the most modern metropolis in the world, they recreated high European country house styles. As Clive Aslet has pointed out, American architects and decorators had the pattern books of France and Britain available to them, through a huge increase in the number and quality of architectural publications.⁸ Clearly intrigued by the apparent incongruity, Lavery decided to reveal this extraordinary development to his British audience, since he selected The Gothic Room to be hung at the Royal Academy, London, in 1926.⁹ When it and the picture of Pratt's library were shown, P. G. Konody remarked that they were "just the kind of shadowed, sun-specked, richly furnished and panelled interior[s] that gives Sir John Lavery full scope for the display of his taste and skill and accurate observation of the play of light."¹⁰

In that year, the perspicacious Lewis Mumford, one of the first commentators on American appropriation of British and French country house style noted that "the essential character of these culture-seekers was that their heart lay in one age, and their life in another."¹¹ There was no artist more capable of responding to this yearning for grande luxe than Lavery. The reveries of The Gothic Room may well be prompted by photographs of stock items supplied by Duveen, but the blazing fire was lit with yesterday's Wall Street Journal. In each of Lavery's compositions Dr. and Mrs. Rice can be seen nestled among their exquisite furnishing and fixtures---an appreciation of their personal portraits linked with those of their "portrait interiors".

¹  The Art News, October 17, 1925 and October 24, 1925, p. 12
²  The exhibition ran at Duveen Galleries from November 30 to December 19, 1925 before transferring to Robert C Vose Galleries, Boston, December 29, 1925 –January 16, 1926. It then travelled – with additions and subtractions---to Chicago, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg.
³  John Lavery, The Life of a Painter, London, 1940, p. 225
⁴  Quoted from an interview. Unidentified press cutting, Eddie Clenaghan's scrapbook
⁵  Elizabeth Robbins Pennell, The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell, Boston, 1930, vol. 2, p. 340, letter dated January 3, 1926
^{6  "}Physician and Author dies", New York Times, July 24, 1956
⁷  Photographs of the interiors of 901 Fifth Avenue by Gottscho-Schleisner Inc, contained in the Library of Congress may be viewed at American Social History Online.
⁸  Clive Aslet, The American  Country House, New Haven, 1990, pp. 63-5
⁹  The picture was shown alongside The Library, 58 East 68^th Street; Harold L Pratt, its owner was a director of Standard Oil, New Jersey. At the same time, Lavery painted portraits of Julia McGuire, (sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 23, 1990); Mrs Frank Joseph Fahey, (sold: Sotheby's London, May 16, 2002); and Harriet Taft Hayward and Mary Elizabeth Hayward, (both Christie's, Scotland, October 28, 2004).
¹⁰  PG Konody, "The Academy – Some Pictures of the Year", The Observer, May 2,1926, p. 12
¹¹ Lewis Mumford, The Golden Day, A Study of American Literature and Culture, Boston, 1957, p. 108