Art Sunday; John Lavery and Anna Pavlova

Last week I showed a little of my visit to the Kelvingrove in Glasgow. I didn’t talk in depth about any of the exhibits; last week was just a general overview of a very small part of Kelvingrove. This week I’m going to concentrate on one of the most beautiful paintings in the permanent exhibition. John Lavery’s portrait of Anna Pavlova.

 

SIR JOHN LAVERY 
(1856 - 1941) painter 
Born Belfast

please take a look at his paintings here;

http://forgetmenot525.multiply.com/photos/album/193/John_Lavery_paintings

His exact date of birth remains uncertain but he was born the was the son of an impoverished publican sometime in 1856. His father was drowned when he was three, and his mother died soon after. He was sent to relatives in Scotland and apprenticed to a painter-photographer in Glasgow at seventeen. After studying at the Glasgow School of Art he set up as an independent artist at twenty-three. He then studied in London and Paris.  John Lavery was an Irish artist but because of his close connections with the Glasgow school of art and his association with other Glasgow artists he is often thought of as a Scottish Artist of the Glasgow school.

His first success came with the showing of his ‘Tennis Par’ at the Royal Academy, London, in 1886; it was very much admired and acquired for the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. This established him as a respected international artist and led the way for serious commissions. Two years after the Tennis party he received a commission to paint the state visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow Exhibition. This painting led to social connections with the rich and famous and these vital social connections led to many more prestigious commissions.

 He was one of the most celebrated artists of his own time. His list of achievements and awards is impressive on any ones standards.  He was knighted in 1918, elected a member of the RA in 1921, followed by member ship of the RHA, Royal Scottish Academy, and the academies of Rome, Antwerp, Milan, Brussels, and Stockholm. He received honorary degrees from QUB and TCD and was made a freeman of Belfast and Dublin. At eighty-four he published his autobiography, The Life of a Painter (1940). He died at Rosenarra House, Kilkenny, 10 January 1941.

The one painting of his that I have seen and admired is of course the portrait of Anne Pavlova on permanent exhibition at Kelvingrove in Glasgow.  

 

Anna Pavlova

her photographs are here;

http://forgetmenot525.multiply.com/photos/album/194/Anna_Pavlova

Anna Pavlova (1882-1931) was possibly the most famous ballerina of all time. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on January 31, 1882, the only child of a very, very poor Russian family. It is documented that she was frail due to her premature birth and constantly suffered one illness after another throughout her childhood. But, somehow, from this poor, weak, frail, child grew a dancer who often gave 9 or 10 performances a week for a period lasting more than 20 years.

Anna first saw the Ballet when she was just 8 years old. She was taken by her mother, as a special treat, to see the Imperial Ballet perform Sleeping Beauty and, it is said, was utterly captivated by the ballet from that moment. She fell in love with the music (Tchaikovsky), the dance, the costume, the atmosphere of the theatre, every thing that surrounded the world of ballet. At 8 she was too young to be admitted to the strict Imperial Theater School, at the Czar's court in St. Petersburg, she had to wait another two years until she was 10n years old to apply. When she did apply she was one of 8 chosen fro over 100 applicants. 

She trained for 7 years and then, at the age of 17, joined the Imperial Ballet. Within 7 years she was the company's prima ballerina. Her dancing was unique, the traditional technique taught in the Ballet school was not her strongest attribute, and many have said that technically she was a weak dancer. Her strength lie in her ability to translate the story of the ballet to the audience and to act out any given part, she had grace, beauty, elegance, empathy for her character and a unique ability to translate emotion in to dance. Audiences loved her, she was a phenomenon. The role she made her own was ‘the Dying Swan’. There is a very interesting quote from Beaumont, an Englsh ballet critic who said of this performance

‘’  The emotion transferred was so over-powering that it seemed a mockery to applaud when the dance came to an end, our souls had soared into empyrean with the passing of the swan; only when the silence was broken could we feel that they had returned to our bodies.’’

This particular solo, one of the best known in the history of ballet, was created for her by Michel Fokine, one of Pavlova's fellow pupils at the Imperial Theater School. He was a young choreographer who  attempted to break with the classical form of ballet practised at that time.

 

 

By 1907  she was on her way to establishing her solo touring career, a career that lasted twenty years and took her all over the world. From this point onwards she lived a large part of her life on trains and in hotels. Toward the end of this period she compromised by omitting  difficult sections of the dance and performing only the less demanding sections. In order to improve her balance and conserve stamina she developed a shoe which became the forerunner to all modern ballet shoes. At the time the conservatives among the ballet world accused her of cheating, but no modern ballerina would attempt toe-work without its equivalent.

 

In 1931 she contracted pleurisy. She reportedly refused treatment out of fear that the treatment (surgery) would leave her unable to dance.

 

 

The Dying Swan

By Alfred Lord Tennyson

I.

The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere
An under-roof of doleful gray.
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,
And loudly did lament.
It was the middle of the day.
Ever the weary wind went on,
And took the reed-tops as it went.

II.

Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,
And far thro' the marish green and still
The tangled water-courses slept,
Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

III.

The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear
The warble was low, and full and clear;
And floating about the under-sky,
Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole
Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear;
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold,
Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold;
As when a mighty people rejoice
With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold,
And the tumult of their acclaim is roll'd
Thro' the open gates of the city afar,
To the shepherd who watcheth the evening star.
And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds,
And the willow-branches hoar and dank,
And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds,
And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank,
And the silvery marish-flowers that throng
The desolate creeks and pools among,
Were flooded over with eddying song.