Sir John Lavery – The Ratification of the Irish Treaty in the House of Lords, December 1921
A re-discovered study by Sir John Lavery of The Ratification of the Irish Treaty in the House of Lords, December 1921 will come up at auction in England in November. The Treaty passed for ratification from the Commons to the Lords on December 16, 1921. It was a moment when the British Empire changed from the rapid expansion from the 1870’s to steep decline in the 20th century.
By then in his ’60’s Lavery, who had been knighted for his services as an official war artist, sought assistance from Sir Patrick Ford and Lord Birkenhead to paint while the house was in session. Armed with these sketches he began work immediately on the large version now in the Glasgow Museums. Lavery frequently gifted his preparatory sketches and gave this one to sculptor George Henry Paulin in gratitude for his portrait of Lavery, a cast of which is in the Glasgow Museums. The study has remained with the family and it will lead Bellmans auction of Modern British and 20th century art on November 21 with an estimate of £20,000-£30,000 (€23,460-€35,190).
It could make more. At Dreweatts in the UK earlier this year a Lavery study for The Hearing of the Appeal of Sir Roger Casement sold for £155,200 with fees (€182,050) over a top estimate of £25,000 (€29,330) after a long bidding battle.
Lavery’s view on Irish independence was clear. In 1910 he wrote to his friend and pupil Sir Winston Churchill, then Minister for the Colonies, that he believed Ireland: “will never be ruled by Westminster, the Vatican or Ulster without continuous bloodshed … and leaving Irishmen to settle their own affairs is the only solution”.
This study by Sir John Lavery of The Hearing of the Appeal of Sir Roger Casement sold for £155,200 with fees (€182,050)