
Penny Day
Head of UK and Ireland
Sold for £21,250 inc. premium
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Provenance
With M. Newman Ltd., London
With Adler Gallery, where acquired by the father of the present owner in 1962
Private Collection, U.K.
Exhibited
London, The Leicester Galleries, Cabinet Pictures by John Lavery, November 1904, cat.no.33 (as The Ophir, On Deck)
The SS Ophir was commissioned in November 1891 for the Orient Steamship Company to ply the route between Tilbury and Sydney, passing through the Suez Canal. The ship's elegant design and modern fittings meant that it immediately became popular with long distance travellers. Lavery's passage however, would have taken him only as far as Tangier or Gibraltar.
Two small panels painted on the Ophir, both similar in size, are known. That entitled On the Sun Deck, and dated 1892, passed through Spink's in 1970. It shows a single traveller in a deck-chair. The present more general view records others dressed for the weather, as the ship passed through the notoriously stormy Bay of Biscay and round the coast of Portugal. Being undated, it is likely to be that shown in the artist's exhibition at The Leicester Galleries in 1904, some twelve years after it was painted. Lavery may well have included it because in 1901 the Ophir had been requisitioned as a royal yacht to take the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, on an extended tour of the British Empire. It was thus restored to topicality. No more than an impromptu sketch it is of exceptional vitality and charm.
We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for compiling this catalogue entry.