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Lot Essay
At 3.00 am, in the early hours of Saturday, 30 November 1889, John Lavery confronted the ‘Jersey Lily’. She was the stellar guest at the Grand Costume Ball at St Andrew’s Halls, Glasgow, held in aid of the Scottish Artists’ Benevolent Association by Glasgow Art Club. She arrived straight from the Royalty Theatre where she had been playing Rosalind in As You Like It, still wearing her stage costume – a dark maroon ‘autumnal’ dress swathed in leopard skin, with her hair, garlanded. A figure of intense interest, Mrs Langtry’s presence alone would have guaranteed press coverage for what one observer described as ‘the most magnificent function of the kind ever witnessed in the West of Scotland’ (Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald, 6 December 1889, p. 4). The actress had returned from a season in North America back in July, when there was intense speculation about her recent divorce. She then embarked on a punishing provincial tour that took her to York and Edinburgh before Glasgow and Belfast, immediately after.
Her week of performances in Glasgow coincided with the ball - an event that attracted 967 of the most prominent west of Scotland citizens – all in fancy dress. So successful was it that the art club published a Souvenir of the Grand Costume Ball … (printed by MacLure, MacDonald and Co.) at the beginning of the following year, sure in the knowledge that most attendees would wish to have one. The evening began at 9.00pm with a grand tableau vivant based on Paul Delaroche’s Hemicycle of the Arts, the famous frieze in the dome of the École des Beaux Arts, in Paris. Lavery appeared in satin doublet and knickerbockers as ‘Rembrandt’, and other Glasgow Boys paraded as ‘Hokusai’, ‘Apelles’, ‘Holbein’ and ‘Bellini’. Thereafter the orchestra took the stage and dancing, ‘somewhat difficult owing to the crowded state of the hall’, commenced at 10.00pm and continued until after 4.00am (Souvenir, pp. 5-8).
Throughout the evening a busy ‘Modern Artist’s Studio’, decorated in blue and gold, boasted “A fresh old master at work every half hour”, and here, Lavery, MacGregor Wilson, A. S. Boyd, Paterson, Kennedy and Hamilton were at work making sketches of the guests. Well practiced at swift ‘impressions’, Lavery was kept busy throughout the evening. James Paterson as ‘Botticelli’ recorded him working on the Langtry sketch (unlocated, Souvenir, plate xvii) while in another illustration, A Corner of the Ballroom (unlocated, Souvenir, plate iii), Lavery shows what may be the ‘Jersey Lily’ being led on to the floor by a gentleman. While the present sketch, the work of no more than thirty minutes, cannot be compared with the earlier, more formal portraits of Mrs Langtry by John Everett Millais and George Frederick Watts, it is a unique record not only of the actress in costume, but of one of the most remarkable occasions in the social life of the second city of the Empire.
We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for preparing this catalogue entry.
Her week of performances in Glasgow coincided with the ball - an event that attracted 967 of the most prominent west of Scotland citizens – all in fancy dress. So successful was it that the art club published a Souvenir of the Grand Costume Ball … (printed by MacLure, MacDonald and Co.) at the beginning of the following year, sure in the knowledge that most attendees would wish to have one. The evening began at 9.00pm with a grand tableau vivant based on Paul Delaroche’s Hemicycle of the Arts, the famous frieze in the dome of the École des Beaux Arts, in Paris. Lavery appeared in satin doublet and knickerbockers as ‘Rembrandt’, and other Glasgow Boys paraded as ‘Hokusai’, ‘Apelles’, ‘Holbein’ and ‘Bellini’. Thereafter the orchestra took the stage and dancing, ‘somewhat difficult owing to the crowded state of the hall’, commenced at 10.00pm and continued until after 4.00am (Souvenir, pp. 5-8).
Throughout the evening a busy ‘Modern Artist’s Studio’, decorated in blue and gold, boasted “A fresh old master at work every half hour”, and here, Lavery, MacGregor Wilson, A. S. Boyd, Paterson, Kennedy and Hamilton were at work making sketches of the guests. Well practiced at swift ‘impressions’, Lavery was kept busy throughout the evening. James Paterson as ‘Botticelli’ recorded him working on the Langtry sketch (unlocated, Souvenir, plate xvii) while in another illustration, A Corner of the Ballroom (unlocated, Souvenir, plate iii), Lavery shows what may be the ‘Jersey Lily’ being led on to the floor by a gentleman. While the present sketch, the work of no more than thirty minutes, cannot be compared with the earlier, more formal portraits of Mrs Langtry by John Everett Millais and George Frederick Watts, it is a unique record not only of the actress in costume, but of one of the most remarkable occasions in the social life of the second city of the Empire.
We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for preparing this catalogue entry.