John Lavery — The Belfast Boy Who Painted Kings

Irish Artist · 1856–1941

John Lavery

The Belfast boy who became painter to kings — and whose wife's face was on Irish money from 1928 until the euro.

Shop the Lavery Collection

Part of our full Irish Art Prints collection.

The Green Sofa by Sir John Lavery

The Green Sofa — a Whistlerian study of his model Mary Auras, and one of his quietest pictures.

The Story

Few Irish lives travelled further than John Lavery's. He was born at 47 North Queen Street in north Belfast, where his father kept a wine and spirit business, and was orphaned before he was four; he died a knight of the realm, at ease among politicians and, in the 1930s, Hollywood film stars, with his paintings hanging in the great galleries of the world. In between, he became one of the most fashionable portrait painters alive — and, quietly, one of the most important Irishmen of his age.

He was born on 20 March 1856 in Belfast, the son of a wine and spirit merchant. His father drowned when John was three, and his mother died soon after. Raised by an uncle near Moira, Co. Down, he was sent to Scotland as a boy and settled in Glasgow in his teens. There, working by day retouching negatives in a photographer's studio, he studied at the Haldane Academy, and then at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he absorbed the fresh, light-filled naturalism of French plein-air painting.

Back in Scotland he became a leading figure of the Glasgow School — the "Glasgow Boys" who dragged British painting into the modern age. His break came in 1888, when he was chosen to paint Queen Victoria's state visit to the Glasgow International Exhibition, a vast group portrait containing 253 individual sitters, which made his name. He moved to London in 1896 and never looked back, becoming the society portraitist of the era, painting royalty, politicians, and beauties.

In 1909 he married Hazel Martyn, an American of Irish descent who had trained as a painter, twenty-four years his junior. She became his great muse. When the Irish Free State needed an emblem of Ireland for its first banknotes, it was Lavery's portrait of Hazel — as a wistful Cathleen Ní Houlihan — that was chosen; her face was on Irish banknotes from 1928, and survived as the watermark on later notes until the euro arrived in 2002. The Laverys were more than artists: during the 1921 Treaty negotiations, they opened their London house at 5 Cromwell Place as neutral ground where the two sides could meet privately, and John painted the men who made the modern Irish state.

He was appointed an official war artist in 1917, attached to the Royal Navy, and was knighted in February 1918. A generous patriot, in 1929 he gave thirty-four paintings to the Belfast gallery that became the Ulster Museum, and in 1935, after Hazel's death, the Treaty portraits and Love of Ireland went to the Hugh Lane in Dublin. He returned to Ireland at the outbreak of the Second World War and died on 10 January 1941 at Rossenarra House, Co. Kilkenny, aged eighty-four.

His first wife, Kathleen MacDermott, died of tuberculosis in 1891, shortly after their daughter Eileen was born; Eileen appears in his pictures for years afterwards. The full story — the shipwreck that orphaned him, the Cromwell Place suppers, and how Hazel ended up on the money — is told in John Lavery: the Belfast orphan who painted the Treaty. His work spans Belfast to Tangier, Venice to the Riviera — the record of a truly Irish life lived on a global stage.

Timeline

  • 1856 — Born 20 March in Belfast; orphaned young, raised near Moira, Co. Down.
  • 1860s–70s — Sent to Scotland as a boy; settles in Glasgow and studies at the Haldane Academy.
  • early 1880s — Studies at the Académie Julian, Paris; embraces French plein-air painting.
  • 1880s — A leading light of the Glasgow School, the "Glasgow Boys."
  • 1888 — Paints Queen Victoria's Glasgow visit, a canvas of 253 sitters; his society career begins. Moves to London in 1896.
  • 1909 — Marries Hazel Martyn, his muse and model.
  • 1917–18 — Official war artist with the Royal Navy; knighted 6 February 1918.
  • 1921 — The Laverys host the Anglo-Irish Treaty delegation in London; he paints its figures.
  • 1928 — His portrait of Hazel as Ireland appears on the new Irish banknotes — issued until 1977, and the watermark until 2002.
  • 1929 — Gives 34 paintings to Belfast; the Hugh Lane bequest follows in 1935.
  • 1941 — Dies 10 January, aged 84.

Where He Painted

No Irish painter roamed further — click a pin to see the work he made there, from the Antrim coast to Tangier, Venice and the Riviera.

Islandmagee · Tangier · Venice · Cap d'Ail — a life painted across the world.

Featured Works

View all Lavery prints

Collector's Guide

Start with The Green Sofa — a Whistlerian study of his model Mary Auras, and the quietest thing he made. Then follow him abroad, to the sunlit scenes of Tangier and Venice. His leisure scenes, like the tennis of Played!!, capture a whole vanished world of Edwardian elegance — the range of Ireland's greatest society painter.

The Lavery Lover's Gift Guide

Three ways into his world, at three price points.

Discover Similar Artists

William Orpen — his great rival among Irish society portraitists. · Frederic William Burton — master of Irish Romanticism. · Mainie Jellett — the modernist who came after.

Or browse the full Irish Art Prints collection.