Sutton Courtenay

Artist Sir John Lavery (1856 - 1941)

Date1917

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions100 x 125 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by Count John McCormack, 1936.

Object number782

DescriptionSutton Courtenay, painted in the summer of 1917, is the Edwardian equivalent of Lavery's plein air views of the river Loing at Grez. It combines society portraits and elegant leisure activity with idyllic outdoor scene involving water. The First World War is far removed from the sunny bliss of this little wharf on the Thames, only the costumes of the ladies remind the viewer that we are no longer at Grez, though the intense blue of the sky mirrored in the almost still water lacks the freshness of Lavery's earlier discovery of the outdoors. Lavery was a good colourist - evidenced here by the cool blue tones of the shadows on the first punt, the repetition of these and the yellow of the dress in the bridge in the background and the green depths of the water below.

Lavery's approach to Naturalism is to modify it carefully, as here, for decorative effect. The diagonal approach of the swans, continued in the line of reflected sky, and reinforced by the parallel diagonal of the pole, acts as a counterpoint to the punts and their occupants to the left, while the reflections of the trees on the far bank are deliberately extended to reduce the areas of sky which would otherwise dominate the canvas. The figures in the painting have been identified as Lady Violet Bonham Carter and her half-sister Elizabeth Bibesco, daughters of H. H. Asquith, with their sealyham terrier Pompey and a man who has been variously named as the writer Stephen McKenna, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Harry Boulton and a Mr Polland. The last two names come from Lavery's biography and picture notes respectively but descendants of the ladies could not verify either, although it is suggested that Mr Polland might be Sir Adrian Pollock who was connected by marriage to the Asquith family.

(Extract from 'Images and Insights', Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1993, p. 70)

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