| John Lavery |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT JOHN LAVERY | |
| northern irish painters | |
| impressionist painters | |
| irish people of world war i | |
| people from belfast | |
| 1856 births | |
| 1941 deaths | |
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.]] Sir John Lavery ( 20 March , 1856 - 10 January , 1941 ) was an Ulster-Scots painter best known for his portraits. Belfast-born John Lavery attended the Haldane Academy in Glasgow , Scotland , in the 1870s and the Académie Julian in Paris in the early 1880s. He returned to Glasgow and was associated with the "Glasgow School". In 1888 he was commissioned to paint the state visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition . This launched his career as a society painter and he moved to London soon after. In London he became friendly with James McNeill Whistler and was clearly influenced by him. John Lavery's first wife, whom he married in 1889, died of . She modelled for the allegorical figure of Ireland he painted on commission from the Irish government, reproduced on Irish Banknotes from 1928 until 1975 and then as a watermark until the introduction of the Euro in 2002. She is reputed to have had affairs with Michael Collins and Kevin O'Higgins ; the latter died with a letter to her in his pocket. Like William Orpen , Lavery was appointed an official artist in the First World War . Ill-health, however, prevented him from travelling to the Western Front . A serious car crash during a Zeppelin bombing raid also kept him from fulfilling this role as war artist. He remained in Britain and mostly painted boats, planes and airships. During the war years he was a close friend of the Asquith family and spent time with them at their Sutton Courtenay Thames-side residence, painting their portraits and idyllic pictures like ''Summer on the River'' (Hugh Lane Gallery). After the war he was knighted and in 1921 he was elected to the . In 1929 John Lavery made substantial donations of his work to both The Ulster Museum and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery and in the 1930s he returned to Ireland. He received honorary degrees from the University Of Dublin and Queen's University Of Belfast . He was also made a free man of both Dublin and Belfast . He died in County Kilkenny , aged 84, from natural causes. WORKS IN COLLECTIONS
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