Hazel Lavery

Mrs Lavery sketching, 1910, National Gallery of Australia

Lady Hazel Lavery (1880 - 1935, née Hazel Martyn) was an artist and the second wife of the celebrated portrait artist Sir John Lavery. She is most remembered for having her likeness appearing on banknotes of Ireland for much of the 20th century.

Life

Born in Chicago, Hazel Martyn was the daughter of Edward Jenner Martyn, a wealthy industrialist of Anglo-Irish extraction. A contemporary account refers to young Hazel Martyn as "The Most Beautiful Girl in the Midwest".

In Brittany in 1904, while unhappily married to a Canadian physician, Hazel Martyn met John Lavery, a Catholic-born painter originally from Belfast. Her husband died shortly thereafter and in 1909 she and Lavery married. Subsequently:

Hazel, a beautiful and fashionable woman who herself liked to draw and paint, became Lavery's most frequent sitter.

During World War I, John Lavery became an official artist for the British government. In 1914, he received a knighthood, and Hazel Lavery was subsequently known by the courtesy title "Lady Lavery".

A biographer of John Lavery describes:

As if in reaction to his services to the Empire, Sir John and Lady Lavery 'rediscovered' a somewhat romanticized version of their Irish roots during the 1920s; but this led to a genuine engagement with the topical question of Home Rule, and Lavery painted several portraits of Irish Republican figures, including that of Eamonn de Valera -- who would be instrumental in keeping Eire out of the next world war.

Sir John and Lady Hazel lent their palatial house at Cromwell Place in South Kensington to the Irish delegation led by Michael Collins during negotiations for the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. After Lady Lavery died in 1935 in London, her funeral mass took place at the Brompton Oratory in Knightsbridge. In Ireland, a memorial service for her took place at the request of Liam Cosgrave's government.

Irish banknotes

After the Anglo-Irish treaty, the Irish Free State government invited Lavery to create an image of a female personification of Ireland for the new Irish banknotes. Such a personification harkens back to figures in ancient Irish mythology and has been exemplified in recent centuries by women such as James Clarence Mangan's Dark Rosaleen and W. B. Yeats' Cathleen Ní Houlihan.

This personification of Ireland modeled on Lady Lavery and painted by her husband was reproduced on banknotes of Ireland from 1928 until the 1970s. This image of Lady Lavery was found as a watermark on banknotes of the Republic of Ireland until the introduction of the Euro in 1998.

Other portraits

The Red Rose, 1923, Crawford Art Gallery

Lady Hazel sat for over 400 portraits by Sir John. Many were similarly-named, leading an expert to remark:

"Hazel in..." is virtually a Lavery trademark.

In 1923, Time magazine remarked that:

Sir John Lavery's much-clawed-over portrait of Lady Lavery (TIME, Aug. 13) has found a resting-place. Lady Cunard, who held that Artist Lavery had been "insulted" when her offer to present the portrait to the Tate Gallery was rejected, has given it to the Guildhall Gallery, London.

Lavery's biographer described "Hazel in rose and grey" as:

One of the nicest of Lavery's "Hazel in" pictures. For once he abandons the full-length format and the composition gains a more curvy, dynamic appearance. Hazel, profiled by what photographers call a hair light, wears a wispy dress the colour of faded hydrangeas.

Another well-known portrait of Hazel Lavery painted by her husband is known as "The Red Rose" (1923). As one expert describes, this painting has a complicated history:

Her well known face and the characteristic red, purple and gold colour harmonies make The Red Rose immediately recognizable as a portrait of her. However, the canvas was begun in 1892 as a portrait of Mrs William Burrell. In 1912 it was transformed into a portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, and in the early twenties it was, for a brief period, a portrait of Viscountess Curzon.

Correspondence

Lady Lavery knew many famous figures of her era and corresponded with such notable figures as Maurice Baring, Hilaire Belloc, Owen Buckmaster, Tim Healy, Shane Leslie, Reginald McKenna, George Bernard Shaw, Lytton Strachey, Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson and W. B. Yeats.

This correspondence became public long after her death and reveals much about her personality and how she was regarded by her contemporaries. Regarding a visit to Ireland by the British Royal family she noted shrewdly:

...they have been trying to keep that yacht race matter very quiet - and for various reasons it is better not to emphasise the affair - people get the idea that the Royal family would not be safe in Ireland..."

In one of several letters she received from Winston Churchill he confided in her his thoughts about the creation of Northern Ireland:

...I have practically always repeated what I said again & again in the House during the passage of the Bill, namely that we never contemplated the "mutilation" of Ulster. I think the Free State are making a frightful mistake in forcing this partition of their country. But of course, if they insist, the Treaty must be executed even though it be to the lasting injury of Irish unity...

Much of this correspondence alludes to Lady Lavery's charm and beauty. Leonie Leslie, the wife of Sir John Leslie, once wrote to her:

Dear little Hazel, I enjoyed Sunday's dinner - & I just want to tell you that I think you are not only a bewitching syren - but a Real Good Sort too!

Sir Gerald Kelly, president of the Royal Academy, wrote to Shane Leslie:

I do know Hazel Lavery and thought she was a nuisance. A beautiful nuisance but a nuisance!

Provocatively, after her death Shane Leslie discussed Hazel Lavery's relationship with Michael Collins and Kevin O'Higgins and wrote:

I have been talking about your proposed life of Hazel Lavery with my hostess. We agree that it is an excruciatingly difficult book to write especially as so much MS material has disappeared...We think that much is quite impossible to tell. Remember Miss Collins is alive and the widow of Kevin O'Higgins. If Hazel's correspondence with those Irishmen Collins and Kevin were published or even their relations were truly portrayed there would be woe in Dublin and much protestation. Both were hopelessly in love with Hazel in the style of Tristram with the wife of King Mark because they had drunk a poisonous drug not intended for them...The Republicans intercepted her letters to Collins & decided to shoot them both...

Speculation about the relationship between Collins and Lady Lavery led a newspaper of the day to refer to her as his "sweetheart", an issue Collins wrote his wife about. According to the Sunday Independent:

Even more than 80 years after his death, speculation is still rife over Michael Collins's love life and whether or not he had an affair with society queen Lady Hazel Lavery.

However, a 2006 book about Collins refutes this speculation:

...the IRA followed both Collins and Lady Lavery. They did a thorough examination of them and they found nothing. If they had discovered they were having an affair, she would have been shot because they would have felt she was a double agent.