Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941) Tangier Oil on canvasboard, 24.5 x 34.5cm (9.6 x 13.5''.) Signed Provenance: Walter B Harris with The Fine Art Society, London, December 1985 Exhibited:...

Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (1856-1941) Tangier Oil on canvasboard, 24.5 x 34.5cm (9.6 x 13.5''.) Signed Provenance: Walter B Harris with The Fine Art Society, London, December 1985 Exhibited: London, The Fine Art Society, Great Cities in the 19th Century, November 1985, cat.no.127 The city's centre of trade, the market-place at Tangier first drew Lavery's attention in 1891 when he painted The Snake Charmers (Private Collection), his first major work upon this setting.1 Enthralled by the city he produced other small studies of the gates, shops and stall-holders, in works such as Bab-es-Sek (Private Collection). He left, resolving to return the following year. Lavery, like Joseph Crawhall, Alexander Mann and Norman Garstin, was attracted to the city because of its brilliant light and the glowing whiteness of its buildings. Garstin for instance commented upon the 'illimitable gradations of white' in its streets and Soko. The market 'was a sort of auction', ...the intending buyers standing or squatting about with a kind of deprecatory listlessness, the ''it is nought, it is nought'' kind of expression of buyers all over this rascally world.2 As with many of Lavery's swift studies, not only is the present example a vivid evocation of the scene before his eyes, but it also functions as the first idea for a larger work which became one of the centre-pieces of his solo exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in June 1908. The painter's vantage point was fixed from the start - showing one of the western gates of the market place, before the addition of new buildings that feature in his later versions of the subject, painted in 1920.3 From here, observing the ebb and flow of human traffic, he was able to construct the monumental Market Place, Tangier c.1907-8 (fig 1, untraced) to which the present sketch relates.4 High enough to show the Kasbah with the tower of the Great Mosque in the distance, it also afforded a view of the Straits of Gibraltar on the right, echoeing Lavery's early canvas, The White City, Tangier, 1892 (Private Collection).5 Crowds form and disperse as the painting proceeds and seemingly random groups are shaped intuitively to support the emerging compositional idea. When this was transferred onto a larger scale, Lavery's smudges became groups of traders, horses, mules and a flock of sheep.6 Of this, ACR Carter remarked, 'In a swirl of movement and life the crowd lives and breathes in the foreground...such a work causes the visitor to come away bouyant in hope for the welfare and appreciation of contemporary British art'.7 A partly erased inscription on the reverse of the picture suggests that the present work was once in the collection of Walter B Harris, The Times correspondent in Tangier. Harris was one of the most distinguished observers of life in Morocco, producing pieces for Saturday Review and The National Review as well as political analysis of the Arab world for his newspaper. His memoir, Morocco That Was, (1921) became a travel classic in the inter-war period.8 He made a number of dangerous expeditions into the interior, on one occasion being captured and ransomed by the brigand, El Raisuli. At this time Lavery painted Harris's portrait and at least three small views of the garden of his house at Tangier. In 1907, the intrepid Times correspondent took the painter, along with RB Cunninghame Graham, on a dangerous overland ride to Fez, where his fluency in Arabic came in useful in negotiating safe passage from war-like tribes.9 Sketches from this journey, along with Tangier studies formed the basis of the Goupil Gallery show. We are very grateful to Kenneth McConkey for compiling this catalogue entry. 1 For further reference see Kenneth McConkey, Sir John Lavery, 1993, (Canongate), pp.84-5 2 Norman Garstin, 'Tangier as a Sketching Ground', The Studio, vol 11, 1897, p.178 3 Unlike this earlier work, both market place scenes of 1920 show crowds gathered for an event of greater significance than that of local trade. Lavery witnessed two such occasions. One was the burial of Kaid Maclean, British advisor to the Sultan in former days. His coffin, mounted on a gun-carraige and escorted by Moroccan troops, passed through streets lined with spectators. The other was the equally ceremonial lowering of teh Moorish flag on the German Legation on 15 January 1920, the subject of a colourful canvas (Christie's 20 May 1999, lot 59) 4 Comparison between the two shows a similar configuration of buildings and groupings of figures 5 See McConkey, 1993, p.92 6 McConkey, 1993, p.94 7 ACR Carter, 'Recent Work by Mr Lavery', The Art Journal, 1908, pp.234-6 8 Walter Harris, Morocco That Was, 1921, (William Blackwood; Eland ed., 1983) 9 John Lavery, The Life of a Painter, 1940 (Cassell), pp.95-6

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