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Lot Essay
In Evening on the Housetop, Tangier Lavery refreshes one of his first and most successful North African themes. On his first visit to Tangier in January 1891, the painter was enchanted by the 'white city' overlooking the Straits of Gibraltar. Pacing the narrow alleyways of the Medina and the bustling marketplace, he found scenes that washed the dull light of the Glasgow studio from his eyes. Like Edith Wharton, he would often hear music coming from the upper storeys of buildings and, surveying the city from the top of his hotel, he found that young women, forsaking the drab costumes of the street, would dance and sing in the cool of the evening on the flat roofs, wearing their most colourful attire. During the next two years on longwinter visits, his objective was to paint such a scene and it culminated in A Moorish Dance, a picture shown at the Royal Academy in 1893.
Thereafter Lavery's career blossomed; he moved to London, worked in Rome and Berlin and in the late nineties returned to his student stamping ground at Grez-sur-Loing. Nevertheless the memory of Tangier remained vivid and in 1903 he returned for an extended stay, purchasing Dar-el-Midfah, a house on Mount Washington to the south-west of the Medina as a winter studio. On this flat-roofed Moroccan villa he would recreate the indolent harem atmosphere of the original Moorish dance in Evening, Tangier 1908 (Birmingham City Art Gallery). Other variants such as Night, Tangier (Ulster Museum, Belfast), followed, and in other instances the rooftop motif was maintained until, with the outbreak of war in 1914, Lavery's winter visits to the 'white city' were halted.
They only resumed six years later on what was to be the last occasion when Evening on the Housetop was painted. Looking out over the Straits his favourite theme revived - the figure standing by the wall looks towards the spectator waiting for the song to begin and the old ritual to re-commence. It was an envoi. Lavery was never to go back to Tangier and in 1923, Dar-el-Midfah was sold.
We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for preparing this catalogue entry.
Thereafter Lavery's career blossomed; he moved to London, worked in Rome and Berlin and in the late nineties returned to his student stamping ground at Grez-sur-Loing. Nevertheless the memory of Tangier remained vivid and in 1903 he returned for an extended stay, purchasing Dar-el-Midfah, a house on Mount Washington to the south-west of the Medina as a winter studio. On this flat-roofed Moroccan villa he would recreate the indolent harem atmosphere of the original Moorish dance in Evening, Tangier 1908 (Birmingham City Art Gallery). Other variants such as Night, Tangier (Ulster Museum, Belfast), followed, and in other instances the rooftop motif was maintained until, with the outbreak of war in 1914, Lavery's winter visits to the 'white city' were halted.
They only resumed six years later on what was to be the last occasion when Evening on the Housetop was painted. Looking out over the Straits his favourite theme revived - the figure standing by the wall looks towards the spectator waiting for the song to begin and the old ritual to re-commence. It was an envoi. Lavery was never to go back to Tangier and in 1923, Dar-el-Midfah was sold.
We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for preparing this catalogue entry.