Sir John Lavery RA RHA RSA (1856-1941) Charity Oil on canvas, 20 x 13.5cm (7¾ x 5¼'') Signed and dated 1881. Inscribed with title and Lavery's studio address 101 St. Vincent Street Glasgow verso...

Sir John Lavery RA RHA RSA (1856-1941) Charity Oil on canvas, 20 x 13.5cm (7¾ x 5¼'') Signed and dated 1881. Inscribed with title and Lavery's studio address 101 St. Vincent Street Glasgow verso Provenance: In current family possession for more than eighty years, accompanied by a copy of a letter from John Hewitt, Ulster Museum dated 25th November 1948 Although Lavery declared that his winter in London in 1880-1 was an unhappy time when he made few friends at Heatherley's art school, it is clear that the student was keen to discover all he could about the most saleable contemporary art. Small genre pictures with implied narratives were enduringly popular as were scenes from Dickens, Faust, Walter Scott and the Brontes. In the present instance Lavery could easily have been thinking of Jane Eyre, alongside the unhoused wayfarers depicted by popular illustrators such as Fred Walker, Arthur B Houghton and William Small. These artists often portrayed members of the middle classes who had fallen on hard times. Such scenes as this - a young woman carrying a book and heavy bag through a snowy landscape - frequently appeared in publications like The Graphic and The Illustrated London News, with commentaries that reflected on the social ills of Victorian life. These followed upon the enormous success of Walker's The Lost Path, shown at the Royal Academy of 1863, a picture of a woman with babe in arms, battling her way through the snow. Pre-dating Lavery's encounter with Bastien-Lepage and painted before his departure for Paris in November 1881, Charity, in technical terms most closely relates to Waiting,(Renfrew Museums and Galleries) a picture of the same date and size, that was shown at the Paisley Art Institute earlier in that year. Kenneth McConkey

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