King
George V, Accompanied by Queen Mary, at the Opening of the Modern Foreign
and Sargent Galleries at the Tate Gallery, 26 June 1926
Sir John Lavery -- Irish
painter
1926
Tate
Gallery
Oil
on canvas
60.8
x 50.7 cm
Presented
by the executors of the estate of the Hon. Mrs Dorothy Rose Burns 1987
T04906
Jpg:
Tate Gallery
From: Tate Gallery
Frances Fowle, December 2000
King George V, Accompanied by Queen
Mary, at the Opening of the Modern Foreign and Sargent Galleries at the
Tate Gallery, 26 June 1926
1926
The . . . Galleries .
. .were opened . . . amid great pomp and ceremony on 26 June 1926.
. . .Financed by Sir Joseph Duveen, director of the Duveen Galleries in
New York and son of the celebrated art dealer, J.J. Duveen.
Duveen commissioned the Irish-born
artist Sir John Lavery to record the event. . . having recorded the
state visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition of
1888.
[This painting] is a preliminary
study made on the spot for a larger, more detailed painting, also in the (Tate)_T.JPG) Tate
collection (Thumbnail), which shows the same event from a different angle.
Here Lavery adopts a high viewpoint, taking in the entire length of the
Turner Gallery, where the ceremony took place. The sketch is rapidly executed
in Lavery's fluid, easy style. According to the Evening News, reporting
on the event, it took only twenty minutes for the sketch to take definite
form: 'For several minutes the King and Queen watched Sir John Lavery at
work and both remarked on the astonishing speed with which the picture
was being carried out…The artist explained,…"For pictures of this kind
to be of any value…they must be done at once; otherwise the atmosphere
of the moment is lost."' . . .
Duveen was closely associated with
Lavery from the early 1920s and was responsible for introducing his work
to the American public. In 1925 the Duveen Galleries held an exhibition
of Lavery portraits, interiors and landscapes which toured America. Later
in 1931 Duveen commissioned a large group portrait of a Royal reception
at Buckingham Palace.
Further reading:
Kenneth McConkey, Sir John Lavery,
Edinburgh 1993, pp.179-80.
Kenneth McConkey, Sir John Lavery
1856-1941, exhibition catalogue, the Ulster Museum, Belfast 1984, pp.89-90.
Frances Spalding, The Tate - A History,
London 1998, pp.49-50.
(Tate
Gallery)
Note:
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