Beschreibung:

THE RISING MOON, TANGIER, 1912 Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941)
Signature: signed lower left; with title [THE RISING MOON/ TANGIER BAY/BY/JOHN LAVERY/ 5. CROMWELL PL:/ LONDON/1912] (in a later hand) on reverse Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 40 by 49.5in., 101.6 by 125.73cm. Provenance: The artist; Thence by descent to Mrs J. McEnery; Her sale, Adam's, 11 December 1990, lot 93; Private collection Christie's 20 May 1999, lot 51; Private collection Adam's 25 May 2005, lot 81 Literature: Mallie, Eamonn (ed.), One Hundred Years of Irish Art, 2000, p.186 Following their marriage in July 1909, Lavery's wife, Hazel and stepdaughter, Alice, joined his entourage on regular winter sojourns in Tangier. Since 1891, the year of his first visit, Lavery had bee... en captivated by 'the White City' and in 1903 had secured a house on Mount Washington overlooking the Straits of Gibraltar. Here the wealthy members of the international community had built themselves secluded villas at a discreet distance from the souk and the kasbah. Whilst it was not palatial, Lavery's retreat, Dar-el-Midfah, 'the House of Cannon', had a sumptuous terraced garden where rambling bougainvillea led the visitor down the hillside towards the sea. This became his winter studio for the first four months of each year, and the place where some of his most memorable canvases were painted. After 1910, Hazel and Alice brought a new dimension to the painter's Tangier studies. Mother and daughter were glimpsed on the beach, on the hilltop paths and entertaining at alfresco breakfasts on the veranda and in the garden. Their presence on these occasions was often a foil to the resplendent vistas provided by a series of headlands known as the Pillars of Hercules that, for the traveller, formed 'the gateway of a world of wonder'. 'Nothing in Tangier' wrote HD Traill, 'will compare with the approach to it by its incomparable bay'. Looking eastward, it is this sequence of inlets leading to the great sweeping bay that we see in the present work. The city is tucked behind the hill on the right. This particular view was one that Lavery painted on many occasions in small 10 by 14 inch studies, one of which was presented to the Scots adventurer, RB Cunninghame Graham (Fig 1. Moonrise, Tangier, c.1912, Private collection). However in 1912, the painter took up this 40 by 50 inch canvas to do full justice to the spectacle. The idyllic world was nevertheless fraught with danger: several of Lavery's neighbours had been kidnapped by local brigands and Hazel, fearful for her daughter's safety, accompanied her everywhere. The Sultan was weak, his police, ineffectual, and his local administrators, corrupt. Such was the growing lawlessness in Morocco that in March 1912, the French army, stationed across the border in Algeria, invaded. Tangier was momentarily quiet, save for the social event of the season, the marriage of Eileen Lavery, the painter's daughter, to James Dickinson, a Liverpool solicitor. Planning for this event did not deter the painter as he embarked on one of his most productive Tangier seasons. In the present canvas Alice, now aged eight, wearing her favourite bandana (Fig 2. Miss Alice Trudeau, 1912, Private Collection), takes centre stage. A second figure, probably her mother, sits overlooking the scene. Lavery may have wished to include others in the composition but in the end an empty chair and table were sufficient to indicate that at moonrise the guests have gone. The last rays of the sun, sinking behind the painter as his works, pick out tiny white buildings perched on the edge of the citadel in the distance. The romance however was not to last. After 1914 travel was restricted and only one further visit was made in 1920. Thereafter, attention shifted to the Riviera and the House of the Cannon was sold in 1923. Ten years later, on a Mediterranean cruise the Laverys passed the Pillars of Hercules without disembarking and the painter looked out upon the White City for the last time. 'I feel quite sad remembering the past' he wrote to hi