beauty, and war

I’ve always liked the paintings of Sir John Lavery; the beautiful languid ones of his wife, the water, and even those teeny, dangerous planes. These are in the local museum and readily available for me to gawp at any time.

The Green Coat

 Daylight Raid From My Studio Window, 7 July 1917

Under the Cherry Tree 

Until recently I had no idea that Lavery was so prolific – there must hardly have been a society or political type who wasn’t painted by him- nor that he was an official war painter. He became too ill to travel to the Western front, but was still able to paint the war.

The First Wounded at the London Hospital, 1914 

Scapa Flow, Orkney, from the Signal Station 

So many discoveries: not only more of Lavery’s art than I’d imagined, but a website where I can see all sorts of paintings in the UK museums from the comfort of my front room, and that Hazel Lavery might have been an interesting woman to know.