Lot Essay
Although popularly associated with female portraits, Lavery's male sitters were not short-changed. During the 1920s he painted a major series of Irish political and religious leaders who, like His Eminence, Cardinal Logue, 1920 (Ulster Museum, Belfast) project a powerful presence. When introduced to Herbert Farrell at Palm Beach, Florida, six years later, Lavery discovered that they had something in common. Although a native of Nashville, Tennessee, the steel magnate and co-founder of the Farrell-Cheek Steel Company traced his ancestry to Northern Ireland. Farrell had established the company with his mother-in-law, Joel Cheek in 1910, partly on the basis of Cheek's success as a coffee importer and founder of the Maxwell House brand. Both businesses prospered - enabling Farrell and his wife, Helen Ritchie Cheek to build a large estate in Nashville, known as Crieve Hall. By the twenties they also had homes in Ohio and West Palm Beach, where Lavery painted the present portrait. In that year he staged a successful exhibition at Whitehall, Palm Beach and in addition to the present work, produced beach studies, pictures of the People's Pool and a view of the sun-filled saloon of the famous Breakers Hotel.
K.M.
K.M.