The strength of the Irish collections lies not just in their scope but their depth. Many artists such as Sir John Lavery, Roderic O'Conor, Paul Henry, William Scott, Colin Middleton, Basil Blackshaw, Louis le Brocquy, and Mainie Jellett, to give a few examples, are represented by paintings showing every stage of their careers.
Perhaps the most important work of this period is Lavery's Under the Cherry Tree, 1884. In 1929, the Belfast-born Lavery gave the collection more than thirty of his paintings, spanning the range of his work from landscape to portrait studies.
John Lavery began his artistic training in Glasgow. During the early 1880s, he studied in Paris and made visits to the artists’ colony at Grez-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau. At Grez, he was one of many young artists to set up their easels in the fields around the picturesque village and work en plein-air, painting in the open air.
Under the Cherry Tree is larger and more ambitious than any Lavery had previously attempted. Considered a youthful masterwork, it is heavily influenced by Bastien-Lepage and shows the painterly techniques he had recently acquired through study in France. The composition is divided into three distinct areas, in each of which Lavery employed a different painting technique.
Image: Sir John Lavery (1856-1941), Under the Cherry Tree (1884). Copyright Estate of Sir John Lavery/Felix Rosenstiel's Widow & Son Limited.
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