SIR JOHN LAVERY R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A., P.R.P., H.R.O.I., L.L.B. (IRISH 1856-1941)
LADY VERONICA HORNBY
£5,544
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale: 08 December 2022 | From 18:00
Description
Signed and stamped, inscribed and dated 1931 verso, oil on canvas board
Dimensions
49cm x 34.5cm (19.25in x 13.5in)
Provenance
Provenance: Christie’s, London, 19th and 20th Century Paintings and Drawings, 30 October 1964, lot 200
Exhibited: P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London, Their Majesties’ Court, Buckingham Palace, 1931, Portrait Studies and Other Sketches by Sir John Lavery RA, November 1932, ill. (unpaginated)
Footnote
Lady Veronica Brenda Hornby (née Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1910-1971) was the daughter of the third Marquess of Dufferin and Ava. A formidable character, in the twenties she practiced her Charleston on the young John Betjeman when he stayed in Clandeboye, the Dufferin’s country home in County Down. Her niece, Caroline, the wife of Lucian Freud, based the character of ‘Aunt Lavinia’ on her in her autobiographical novel, Great Granny Webster (1977). She married Sir Roger Anthony Hornby, a stockbroker, in December 1931 – a wedding marked by the Laverys with a gift of cream-white china that apparently ‘inspired the bride to decide that her bedroom is to be a symphonie de blanc majeur’ (The Sketch, 16 December 1931, p. 461). This was to be the first of Lady Veronica’s four marriages and it ended in divorce in 1940.
We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for the cataloguing of these artworks.