Sir John Lavery’s painting of the Viscountess Castlerosse at Palm Springs. comes up at Christie’s Modern British Art evening sale in London on March 1 with an estimate of £400,000-600,000. With all its connotations of the rich at play in the years between the First and Second World Wars it is redolent of an era long gone. Doris Delavigne married the 6th Earl of Kenmare in 1928. A similar version of the scene sold for €50,000 at de Veres in Dublin in 2014.
Christie’s list the provenance as: The artist, and by descent to his granddaughter, Lady Ann Sempill.
Her sale; Christie’s, London, 13 May 1966, lot 77, as ‘Portrait of Lady Castlerosse, seated on a springboard at Palm Springs’.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, London, 22 May 1997, lot 264, as ‘Lady Castlerosse on a diving board’, where purchased by the present owner.
