When he arrived in Paris in November 1881, Lavery’s objective was to join the throng of students in two of the most popular teaching ateliers. In this he was not alone – his companions at the Hôtel de Saxe, William Kennedy, Alexander Roche and Thomas Millie Dow, were friends from the Haldane Academy (Glasgow School of Art), which, like the Metropolitan School in Dublin, was obliged to adopt the stale curriculum of the Government Art Training School. At this point, it was generally considered that ‘a year or two at Julian’s, the Beaux Arts, or Colarossi’s’ was ‘worth a cycle of South Kensington [the Government School] with all its correctness.’

They first registered at the Julian’s, located in the upper floors of the Passage des Panoramas, one of the famed shopping arcades near the Bourse. Here the young painter would receive instruction from Adolphe William Bouguereau, the painter of his favourite picture – the Vierge Consolatrix, 1875 (Musée de Strasbourg). However, the master visited the studio only once a week and his comments were perfunctory. Lavery’s drawings were wooden and he had little idea of tonal gradation. Because it was crowded and noisy at Julian’s, some found it difficult to concentrate. The painter recalled that ‘each student [was] trying to bang and yell louder than his neighbours, singing sacred and bawdy songs, giving wonderful imitations of High Mass being chanted to profane music …’ To atone for his presence at these blasphemous rituals, he attended the special mass for students at St Sulpice on Sundays.

At 4 o’clock the atelier closed and everyone repaired to one of the nearby drinking establishments. Diligent students, Lavery among them, then walked across the city to Montparnasse, to the atelier Colarossi, where they attended evening classes. Although also crowded, here at least, the atmosphere was more serious. Models posed in costume – in classical, religious or Oriental dress, in turbans and other exotic headdresses - on the assumption that young painters would wish to specialise in one of the lucrative strands of Salon painting.

The present work, Woman in an Arab costume, painted on a fine-grained Parisian canvas is likely to have been the product of the Colarossi sessions. It bears comparison with other works of the period. One of his contemporaries and future portrait commission rivals, Percy Jacomb Hood recalled, “I used to meet him [Lavery] at a studio kept by a retired model named Colarossi, where you could pay by the week and there were models, nude and in costume. Many of us used to work there in the afternoon from the costume model, among our number being Lavery, who was in the habit of faking backgrounds to his costume studies and making them into pictures which were bought by some dealer in Glasgow”. Hood wryly concludes, “this was supposed to be a dreadful crime by the purists, who probably would have been glad to do the same, if they could”. Thus the head and half-length costume-pieces of Gretchen, Marguerite and Faust, painted in Glasgow, gave way in 1882 to more ambitious studies such as that of a Spanish Brigand (fig 1). Colarossi was known to favour Latin and North African types.


Close examination of these works reveals similar types of block signatures and characteristically angular treatment of date numerals – the flattened ‘8s’. During the year rapid progress is also apparent. Lavery’s handling became more confident and his drawing, more skilful. He was yet to adopt the ‘square brush’ application that characterised his work in the following year, but in the subtle transitions of flesh tone and the careful rendering of folds in the drapery of A Woman in Arab Costume, a talented student is mastering his craft.

Dr Kenneth McConkey
Northumberland
February 2009