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Lot Essay
The present sketch, which dates from circa 1906, shows Lavery's teenage daughter, possibly in school uniform. It typifies the sort of swift experiment that the painter would carry out when planning a full-length portrait. Such works enabled him to establish the basic pose and palette before commencing work.
Born in 1891, Eileen was Lavery's only natural child.2 Her mother, Kathleen MacDermott, died within months of her birth.3 When he settled permanently in London in 1898, she attended the Sacred Heart Convent at Roehampton. At this time he placed her in the foreground of the double portrait, Père et Fille, 1897-1900 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) and in 1901 produced a full-length portrait on the occasion of Her First Communion, (private collection).4 For this latter work, a small study, similar in scale to the present picture was produced (fig. 1, Ulster Museum, Belfast).
By 1907, Eileen was accompanying her father on his annual visits to Tangier where she was renowned as a keen horsewoman, riding with the Tangier Hunt. In celebration of her skills Lavery painted The Amazon 1910 (Ulster Museum, Belfast), a large equestrian portrait, with full-sized horse and rider. Many small sketches of Eileen were produced for this and other works of the period.
Eileen Lavery married John Dickinson, a solicitor, in Tangier in April 1912. The following year her daughter Diana (1913-1960) was born. The marriage however, ended in divorce during the war and in 1920 she remarried, this time to William Francis Forbes-Sempill (later Lord Sempill, 1893-1965). They had two children, Ann Moira (later Lady Sempill, 1920-1995) and June (1922-1942). In 1926, Eileen, a keen aviator delivered one of the biplanes purchased by the newly-formed Irish airforce to Dublin. At this point her father painted her portrait, dressed in flying kit, as The First Irish Airwoman (Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin). By 1930 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and spent long periods of recuperation in Swiss sanatoria. Eileen was seriously ill at the time of Hazel Lavery's funeral in January 1935, and she died in July of that year, at the age of forty-four.
Exploratory compositional sketches and head studies, similar to Eileen in Green were sometimes given to sitters when a commission was completed. The present example was presented as a gift or momento, possibly around the time of Lavery's retrospective exhibition in 1914, for which Sir William agreed to lend his wife's portrait.5
1 It has not been possible to affirm the identity of Lady Helen Young. She may have been the wife or daughter of Sir William Young. Lady Young, Sir William's wife was painted in 1899 and exhibited at Lavery's Retrospective Exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries in 1914 (no. 112). It was cut down in 1940.
2 Formerly known as Portrait of Lady Sempill, Eileen in Green, predates the sitter's marriage to the Master of Sempill. Formerly dated circa 1914, we can be fairly certain that the picture was painted around eight years earlier. In her late teens, Eileen seldom wore her hair unclipped as in the present work.
3 Lavery was later to discover that the flower girl who introduced herself to him as Kathleen MacDermott, was actually called Annie Evans. For further reference see K. McConkey, Sir John Lavery, Edinburgh, 1993, p. 67.
4 Père et Fille was exhibited at the first International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers exhibition in 1898, and the Salon of 1900, from which it was purchased by the French State. See K. McConkey, 1993, pp. 75-78. For Her First Communion, see K. McConkey, 1993, pp. 77, 79-80.
5 The circumstances surrounding the Young's friendship with Eileen remain obscure.
K.M.
Born in 1891, Eileen was Lavery's only natural child.
By 1907, Eileen was accompanying her father on his annual visits to Tangier where she was renowned as a keen horsewoman, riding with the Tangier Hunt. In celebration of her skills Lavery painted The Amazon 1910 (Ulster Museum, Belfast), a large equestrian portrait, with full-sized horse and rider. Many small sketches of Eileen were produced for this and other works of the period.
Eileen Lavery married John Dickinson, a solicitor, in Tangier in April 1912. The following year her daughter Diana (1913-1960) was born. The marriage however, ended in divorce during the war and in 1920 she remarried, this time to William Francis Forbes-Sempill (later Lord Sempill, 1893-1965). They had two children, Ann Moira (later Lady Sempill, 1920-1995) and June (1922-1942). In 1926, Eileen, a keen aviator delivered one of the biplanes purchased by the newly-formed Irish airforce to Dublin. At this point her father painted her portrait, dressed in flying kit, as The First Irish Airwoman (Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin). By 1930 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and spent long periods of recuperation in Swiss sanatoria. Eileen was seriously ill at the time of Hazel Lavery's funeral in January 1935, and she died in July of that year, at the age of forty-four.
Exploratory compositional sketches and head studies, similar to Eileen in Green were sometimes given to sitters when a commission was completed. The present example was presented as a gift or momento, possibly around the time of Lavery's retrospective exhibition in 1914, for which Sir William agreed to lend his wife's portrait.
K.M.