SIR JOHN LAVERY, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. (IRISH, 1856-1941)
The Moorish Dancer
oil on panel
29.5 x 20.2 cm. (11 1/2 x 8 in.)

Provenance
Sale; Regents of Finchley, London, 15 March 1992, lot 252, where purchased by the present owner

Exhibited
Bangor, Ava Gallery, Modern Masters, 16 March-8 April 2005

Literature
Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery, Canongate Press, Edinburgh, 1993, p.86

We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.

Lavery first travelled to North Africa in 1891 and was immediately captivated by it, above all by the city of Tangier and its inhabitants. Professor Kenneth McConkey relates this panel to a series of studies Lavery made towards the large composition 'A Moorish Dance', which he intended as his Royal Academy exhibition piece of 1893. This particular study concentrates on the dancer and simplifies the musicians into a single shape.

“To observe ‘A Moorish Dance’, Lavery placed himself in the casbah and carefully recorded the players of viols, tambourines and drums…the immediacy of Lavery's swaying Arab girl…the éclat in the slashing greens and reds of the Arab dress"
(Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery', Canongate Press, Edinburgh)