Le Havre – Nurse Billam and Sister Currier

John Lavery painted his way from a Belfast orphanage to a knighthood. He trained in Glasgow and Paris, absorbed Bastien-Lepage’s plein air naturalism, and made his name with a painting of Queen Victoria’s 1888 visit to the Glasgow International Exhibition, a commission involving some two hundred and fifty separate sittings. Society portraits followed and paid well. His wife Hazel appeared in many of them and later on Irish banknotes, her face standing in for the personification of Ireland. The more interesting work sits outside the commissions: tennis parties, Moroccan courtyards, hospital wards painted as an official war artist, and the courtroom sketches from the trial of Roger Casement. He was close to both sides during the Irish Treaty negotiations and painted several of the principals.