IN the late 1860s, when John Lavery ran away to Glasgow, he was so poor that he scavenged scraps of food from the streets and washed them in fountains. By the age of 32, he had won a gold medal at the Paris Salon and been commissioned to paint Queen Victoria. He would become a Society portraitist of international renown, whose cosmopolitan lifestyle echoed that of his patrons.
As Lavery scholar Kenneth McConkey has observed, it seems the artist lived more than one life. This is a theme of the new exhibition Prof McConkey has co-curated. ‘Lavery. On Location’ takes us from Ireland to California, encountering along the way Lavery the French naturalist, the Glasgow Boy, the Orientalist; Lavery the war artist and Irish mediator; Lavery the painter of portraits, landscapes and historical events; and Lavery the globetrotting observer of modern life.
It’s an impressive trajectory for the son of a failed wine merchant from Catholic Belfast. Orphaned when he was three, Lavery lived on his
