John Lavery
Today we present one of John Lavery's most striking Riviera paintings, showing a golden moment during a long-delayed winter holiday with his wife Hazel. The couple arrived at the fashionable Eden-Grand Hotel in Cap d'Ail in France in February 1921, after Lavery had sold his house in Tangier and turned his attention to the French Riviera, which was just reawakening after the first World War. In previous years it drew Impressionists like Monet and Renoir, and it would soon lure F. Scott Fitzgerald's wealthy "playboy" crowd via the new luxury rail lines.
The painting shows the hotel's terrace overlooking the bay, with Beaulieu and Cap Ferrat visible in the distance, and Hazel Lavery seated, absorbed in a magazine. What is really stunning in this work are the vivid colors and bold composition—earlier artists like Whistler and Monet had painted elevated balcony views of cities, but here Lavery found "richer fare" in the sunlit Mediterranean panorama.
The work emerged from what Lavery called a "busman's holiday" ... even on vacation he was preparing canvases for an upcoming exhibition. That show, held later in 1921 at London's Alpine Club, was a critical success, with a catalog foreword written by Lavery's pupil, Winston Churchill, who praised how the paintings captured Riviera sunlight as "gay and pellucid and pleasurable."
P.S. Here are 10 paintings to bring a summer breeze into your home!
P.P.S. Our calendar presale ends tomorrow! If you’d like to support our work while bringing something artsy and beautiful into your home, now is the perfect time—after that, prices will go up. Check our calendars here! :)