Return from Market

Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856–1941)

Oil on canvas

46 x 24 ½ in · 116.5 x 61.5 cm

Signed and dated 1884–87 Verso, signed and inscribed with title

Provenance: The artist; thence by descent to Lady Sempill; sold Sotheby’s 29 April 1970; to The Fine Art Society, London; Private Collection; Sotheby’s 18 May 2001 to the present owner [Continued below]

Exhibited: Edinburgh, International Exhibition, 1886, no.32 Paisley, Art Institute, 1889 no.107 as Evening on the Loing: Peasants returning from Market Edinburgh, Fine Art Society at the English Speaking Union, 100 Years of Scottish Painting, 1968, no.88 London, Fine Art Society, The Glasgow School of Painting, 1970, no.24 Edinburgh, London, Belfast and Dublin, Sir John Lavery, 1856–1944, 1984, no.12 (illus. in cat)

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Commentary by Kenneth McConkey

Reflecting on his youth, Lavery recalled that his ‘happiest days’ in France were spent at Grez-sur-Loing, the sleepy, picturesque village a few miles south of Fontainebleau.1 For eight years before his arrival in 1883, Grez was continuously popular as an artists’ colony, and after his departure the following year it began to be hailed as a crucible of modern painting, attracting painters from Britain, Ireland, America, Scandinavia and Japan.2 Its ivy-clad castle, once a temporary home of Mary, Queen of Scots, its ancient bridge and village church became, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s words, ‘anonymously famous’ in the work of resident artists, while raucous gatherings in its hotel gardens, became the focus of Bohemian life.3

Although entering into the spirit of these social occasions, Lavery came to Grez in 1883 and 1884 to learn. Two intense periods of concentrated work have left the most comprehensive record of life in the colony, depicting aspects of peasant life, fellow artist visitors at work and play, and even, in one memorable canvas, the maids of the hotel Chevillon.4 In Return from Market however, the painter was more ambitious than ever before. He did not simply copy Stott of Oldham and Herrison’s motifs, but used the ‘shallop’, a broad, heavy flat-bottomed punt as a means of describing the complex spatial recession on the surface of the river. Lily pads, which fall away at the bottom edge of the canvas, take the eye to the prow of the boat which in turn, dramatically approaches the river bank. Shallop, sky and the surrounding landscape are all reflected on the still surface of the water that lies between and beyond the lily pads. As they approach the bank, the women in the boat enter the canopy of riverside trees. They are seen in contre jour. Lavery’s illusion is at once vivid and memorable, its compositional strength underscored by sharp diagonals created by one oar held by the peasant girl, and the other, cutting the canvas just above the mid-point. Close examination of the picture surface reveals that the painter reworked the girl and the oars to give her a more central position, possibly after his return to Glasgow at the end of 1884. When the picture was lightly sketched in the background of A Visit to the Studio in 1885, it is noteworthy that the dramatic left hand oar was not included. That The Return from Market should be employed in this way, indicates its importance to the painter. It was a picture that he wanted to live with, after his return. A talisman, it lay dormant for nearly thirty years, until in 1913, Lavery painted The Thames at Maidenhead, (Private Collection) and The Wharf, Sutton Courtenay, (Dublin City Art Gallery, The Hugh Lane) in which the rustic shallop is transformed into a long, sleek river punt.5

References

Billcliffe, Roger. The Glasgow Boys. London: John Murray, 1985; pp. 92,98 (illus.).

McConkey, Kenneth. Lavery and the Glasgow Boys. Exhibition Catalogue. Clandeboye, County Down: The Ava Gallery; Edinburgh: Bourne Fine Art; London: The Fine Art Society, 2010. No. 4.

McConkey, Kenneth. ‘From Grez to Glasgow: French Naturalist Influence in Scottish Painting’, The Scottish Art Review xv, no.4, (1982): 29, 31 (illus.)

McConkey, Kenneth. Sir John Lavery. London: Canongate, 1993;, p.34 (illus.).

McConkey, Kenneth. ‘… the incommunicable thrill of things … British and Irish Painters in Grez-sur-Loing’, in Toru Arayashiki ed., The Painters in Grezsur- Loing. Japan Association of Art Museums: 2000; p.258.

McConkey, Kenneth. John Lavery, A Painter and his World. London: Atelier Books, 2010; (illus. in col.).

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Last modified 5 October 2011