Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941) AN EAST WIND, 1912 oil on canvas laid on board inscribed [

Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941) AN EAST WIND, 1912 oil on canvas laid on board inscribed [To The Countess Becdelievre from John Lavery 1912] lower left; signed and titled on reverse 10 x 14in. (25.40 x 35.56cm) Adam's, 1 April 2009, lot 131;Private collection 'Exhibition of Irish Art', Milmo-Penny Fine Art, Dublin, June 1991, catalogue no. 5 In the autumn of 1912 Lavery sent his recently completed full-length portrait of Cécile Marie Ernestine Roger de Villers, Countess Becdelièvre, to the annual Autumn Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Nothing is known about the circumstances of the commission and the portrait in which the countess wears, 'a wonderful Parisian creation in shimmering satin' remains unlocated. The present seascape, probably given to the countess at the time of the sittings, is the only evidence we have of the friendship that was formed as a result of the commission. Sketches, personally inscribed to favoured sitters, are not uncommon in the Lavery oeuvre. The fact that this represents a familiar group of rocks on the shore at Tangier may also indicate that the painter and his subject met in the 'White City'. In March 1912 while Lavery was working at his Tangier studio, and anticipating the wedding of his daughter, Eileen, General Lyautey invaded Morocco, making it a French protectorate. The numbers of diplomats and military personnel in the city immediately increased. Since the illustrious Becdelièvres were a military family, it is possible that the portrait commission resulted from this intervention - it was one of a number of portraits of the French nobility painted around this time, when the painter's reputation in Paris was consistently high. Between March and September 1912, at the International Society's exhibition in June, the painter had exhibited five small recent seascapes to which the present example may relate. All of these were 10 x 14 canvasboards, of which he had an ample supply. In the present case, the rocks on the left, stretching into a choppy sea, are likely to be those depicted on other occasions - most notably in A Rough Sea (Paisley Art Institute). At low tide, on a calmer day, these same rock pools would attract his wife and step-daughter, and their presence would be used to punctuate compositions that would then be re-worked on a larger scale. The beach also became a convenient thoroughfare for passers-by as in The West Wind 1911 (Private Collection). Few beach scenes however, apart from the Paisley picture and possibly, Tangier Bay, Rain 1910 (Ulster Museum), show inclement or potentially stormy conditions - as here. During the early months of 1912, as Lavery noted in a letter, the weather was colder and less predictable than usual, and strong easterlies swept the Straits of Gibraltar. While his painting activities were restricted, he was nevertheless a seasoned campaigner and small studies such as the present example were always possible. While the wind may whip up the sands on the shore, and threaten to overturn a larger easel, it made no impact upon the delightful freshness of the present sketch held securely in a field-box. Professor Kenneth McConkeyJanuary 2017