NEW YORK — While Ireland is a fairly small country, about half the size of New York state, it has produced several artists who have achieved fame on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Among its renowned painters is Sir John Lavery, who was acclaimed for his portraits and wartime images as well as his landscapes and scenes from his travels to then-exotic destinations such as Morocco.

At age three, the future artist was sent to live with an uncle after his parents died; his father drowned en route to America, and his mother died three months later. Although Lavery spent time in Glasgow and has been associated with the artist collective known as the Glasgow Boys, he always considered himself an Irishman through and through. Fittingly, he adopted St. Patrick’s Day as his birthday, according to his autobiography, which was published in 1940. March became an even more significant month for him after he was elected to the Royal Academy in March 1921.

Poor health and injuries sustained in a car crash during a bombing raid kept him from the front lines during World War I. Instead, he served his country as an official war artist, a post that allowed him to stay mostly in Great Britain, painting planes and ships, the activity at British naval bases or in France and creating images of the work being done in field hospitals. He was knighted after the war.

Famous for his naturalistic and impressionistic style, Lavery preferred sketching en plein air as evident in a circa-1929 oil painting, Chiswick Baths, which brought $118,114 plus the buyer’s premium in June 2022 at Adam’s Auctioneers. The baths were near his studio in South Kensington, and he captured the excitement of a typical summer day in the vibrant yet delicately rendered crowd scene. Colorful figures dot the landscape, both in and out of the outdoor pool. The double-decker changing room in the upper left corner of the painting and the four-tier diving board platform reflect the modernizing of architecture during Edwardian times. The baths, which were built in 1909, closed in 1981 due to maintenance costs, but they live on in this painting.

For many artists of Lavery’s era, sweeping travel scenes helped them gain fame and have fun away from home, but commissioned portraits were the bread-and-butter jobs that underwrote their extensive travels and supported their families. Lavery was no exception, and he painted many portraits. His second wife, Hazel Martyn (1886–1935) often posed for him and is said to have appeared in more than 400 of his paintings. Despite being American by birth, she appeared on Irish banknotes for more than 50 years as an allegory for Ireland, created by her husband.

“In 1888 he was commissioned to paint The State Visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition, and the resulting studies launched his career as a society portraitist,” according to the Ulster Museum in Belfast, Ireland. After establishing his reputation with this honor, Lavery was highly sought after by well-to-do clientele. He painted the likenesses of many women sitters, as well as key figures in Ireland such as Michael Collins. A circa-1910 double-sided portrait that earned $12,000 plus the buyer’s premium in November 2022 at Fine Estate, Inc., depicted a three-quarter-view portrait of a woman with drapery around her shoulders on one side and a full-length portrait of a musician on the other side titled Woman in Brown.

In 1920, he painted a portrait of Freda Dudley Ward, the married socialite who was the mistress of the Prince of Wales before he became king of England and swiftly abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. The oil portrait, titled The Lady in Black and Green (Mrs. Dudley Ward), attained $110,000 plus the buyer’s premium at Clars Auction Gallery in February 2021. The date of this painting matches the time period when she was with the then-prince Edward.

By the time that Ward sat for a portrait by Lavery, he was well-acquainted with Morocco. He visited the country every winter from the 1890s until the start of World War I, returning again in the 1920s. He bought a winter home in Tangier in 1903 and enjoyed painting the so-called “white city” and its people and landscapes. One such painting, The Beach, Tangier, dating to 1911, sold for $62,500 plus the buyer’s premium in July 2019 at Capsule Auctions. This artwork was done from one of Lavery’s favorite painting locations in Tangier and shows tidal currents receding while figures on horseback —traders, perhaps — make their way to the city along the edges of the sea.

Another vista from the Far East, possibly painted in Morocco or Tunisia, is a street scene depicting an Arab market that realized $1,750 plus the buyer’s premium in May 2021 at NY Elizabeth. Bustling with activity, the painting has all the classic elements one would expect from Lavery: a tent, flowing robes, and the sharp contrast of the deep blue sky against the city’s architecture.

Many of Lavery’s finest paintings are in museum collections, especially the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin and the Ulster Museum in Belfast. While a Lavery painting set the auction record for an Irish artist last spring in London when it sold for $3.5 million, some of his works have prices that are accessible to most collectors. His renditions of languorous beach scenes and portraits of refined women are sure to bring delight for generations to come.