A new perspective on a famous Irish painter

There are advantages to a life spent in the big city, not least the sheer handiness of seeing and doing so many things. Whether that’s a big match, concert, or exhibition, a capital has always plenty going on. Does that compensate for living away from home? That is always a big question for those of us from the west of Ireland who live in Dublin, or further afield.

The experience of someone else who led their life in different places led me one Sunday morning to the National Gallery to see its new exhibition on the work of the painter, John Lavery. Lavery is best known for two things: his work as a portrait painter, and that he was married to Hazel.

Hazel Lavery was the literal image of Ireland. The Free State, not long after independence, commissioned the Belfast-born Lavery to produce a female image to personify the country. The cultural nationalist movement – with Yeats and Lady Gregory at the helm with their depiction of Cathleen Ní Houlihan – had often used a female character to do this.

Lavery chose Hazel as the inspiration for his painted version of Ireland as Cathleen. That image is one we all know: it was on the front of our banknotes until the 1970s and then used as the watermark for our money until we replaced the pound with the euro.

It wasn’t just the painting of his wife that made him famous. Lavery was the portrait artist of his time, producing hundreds of works of all sorts of people, among whom were Michael Collins (alive and dead), the British royal family, and Winston Churchill. His output and reach were enormous: a one-man Instagram of his time. You went to Lavery when you had done good and wanted the world to know it: you paid
well for it. If he approached you to paint your portrait, you knew you had done very well indeed.

Because he is so well known for these aspects of his life and work, the new exhibition steers away from them.

‘Lavery: On Location’ focuses much more on Lavery as an accomplished and skillful painter of scenes in the very many places he visited and had a deep connection with. As an exhibition it has the major advantage that you don’t need any special understanding of Lavery’s
influences (though there is plenty on that to read) because his work is all very simply and beautifully done. You will encounter a blaze of light and artistic skill: his work conveys light, colour, and atmosphere, and the exhibition presentation does that full justice.

It is full of points of interest, presented without abstraction, just a series of images of scenes, places and people within them that you will enjoy. As an artist, he was prolific. Everywhere he went he brought his painting set with him. He was forever ruining family holidays by immediately setting to work not only when he got to a place, but on the journey there. By bringing us through his journeys, the places he lived as well as visited, the exhibition tells a story of this man’s life and influences throughout his career.

Lavery trained in Glasgow before heading to France (a common location for a painting apprenticeship at the time) to learn from fellow artists and perfect his trade. The exhibition follows him on the many journeys that followed, bringing us paintings from north Africa, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and the United States. Given my own preoccupations, I couldn’t help noticing however, that I never got a sense of where he was most at home.

Among my own favourites, there are some especially good paintings of Tangiers, including a particularly striking one of the city at night. There are two paintings made in France of a particular bridge, The Bridge at Grez, which make the visit worth it on their own. There are a set of four paintings of war scenes from the First World War, three of which are different from anything you might have seen before and really interesting for it. The submarine painting is the pick of the bunch, though the more usual subject, the ‘War Cemetery’, is nonetheless poignant.

A major idea of the exhibition is to take you away from thinking of Lavery as just a portrait painter and remind you that he was a painter of high skill in all sorts of scenes and settings, especially of the outdoors. There are some suggestions in the exhibition of his progressive and liberal views on a variety of subjects, not least on Ireland’s independence.

Despite those two themes, the impression I formed was that (fine and all as his work is) the celebrated portrait painter of society figures was never too far away. To my eye, he seemed a safe depicter of scenes, whether indoors or outdoors. There was no work in the exhibition that might make you drop anything in your hand at the searing insight or power or energy in them. There are no images of anything unjust or in need of remedy. They are a series of beautiful pictures that challenge nothing, which is what you would expect from an artist who made his money painting those who were either powerful or wealthy or were on their way to one of those categories. Maybe there is more of his work out there that would tell a wider story.

However, that doesn’t take away at all from the beauty of the pictures or how much you will enjoy a fine hour or so picking out your own favourites. The exhibition is open and runs until January 14, 2024. It is expensive at around €17 for a ticket at the weekend.

Having done some work for the gallery, I know that exhibitions of this quality aren’t cheap to put on. A lot of the works have come from all sorts of places and they make an impressive collection.

There are a lot of ways you can get in to see it cheaper, or even for free, with special prices for over 65s, students and kids go free. The website will tell you all about that and if you combine your visit with a look around to a few
of the highlight rooms in the gallery, as well as coffee and scone or a nice lunch, you will think you have done well for the money spent.

So on any Sunday morning, I might be at Lavery in the National Gallery or an Andy Warhol exhibition in the Hugh Lane. Of an evening, it could be the latest in the Abbey. Life in the city certainly has its advantages. But would I prefer to be heading out to walk in some remote part of Mayo instead? Or jumping into the sea in Mulranny? Or looking up at the dark skies over Ballycroy? Do such things tip the balance in favour of a city over a country life? That is something I have never answered, and in considering my own perspective on a life also lived in more than one location, I imagine I never will.