Man of the world

Sir John Lavery is best known as a Society portraitist, but he was also a plein-air painter of modern life who moved easily between continents, painting as he went. Mary Miers follows his peregrinations

- Mary Miers

IN the late 1860s, when John Lavery ran away to Glasgow, he was so poor that he scavenged scraps of food from the streets and washed them in fountains. By the age of 32, he had won a gold medal at the Paris Salon and been commissioned to paint Queen Victoria. He would become a Society portraitist of international renown, whose cosmopolitan lifestyle echoed that of his patrons.

As Lavery scholar Kenneth McConkey has observed, it seems the artist lived more than one life. This is a theme of the new exhibition Prof McConkey has co-curated. 'Lavery. On Location' takes us from Ireland to California, encountering along the way Lavery the French naturalist, the Glasgow Boy, the Orientalist; Lavery the war artist and Irish mediator; Lavery the painter of portraits, landscapes and historical events; and Lavery the globetrotting observer of modern life.

It's an impressive trajectory for the son of a failed wine merchant from Catholic Belfast. Orphaned when he was three, Lavery lived on his uncle's Ulster farm until, aged 10, he was shipped off to Ayrshire to stay with another relation who ran a pawn shop. He escaped to Glasgow, where he shared dosshouse mattresses, ate at food depots and took menial jobs. Familiar only with gaudy lithographs, he became obsessed by drawing, for which he was given 'the first words of encouragement I had ever known'. He got an apprenticeship colouring photographs, attended classes at the Glasgow School of Art and, in about 1876, set himself up as an artist.

Lavery was pleased when his studio burnt down, as the insurance payment enabled him to pursue his studies in London and Paris. He later regretted that his lack of French hampered any chances of getting immersed in the Parisian art scene, although he claimed to have had a painting hung beside Manet's Bar at the Folie Bergères at the 1883 Paris Salon.