Footnotes

Provenance
Sale; Sotheby's, New York, 24 January 1980, lot 326
With Schweitzer Galleries, New York, where purchased by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

When originally catalogued over twenty years ago, the present picture's placing within the oeuvre remained unclear. It was known that Lavery had visited Tunisia, early in 1919, and at the beginning of December that year, had returned to Tangier (see lot 22). Only with the discovery of a series of letters in 2017 did it become clear that in early April 1920 he had made his second trip to Fez as part of a longer tour that took in Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakech. His vivid memories of this ancient apex of trade routes across the Maghreb, stretched back to 1906 when, with the writer, R.B. Cunninghame Graham and Times correspondent, Walter Harris, he made his first expedition to Fez. While this earlier expedition had to be conducted on horseback over terrain controlled by brigands, the second, in 1920, was possible by car on roads recently laid by German prisoners-of-war.

So, on 3 April 1920, Lavery wrote to his daughter from Casablanca, that they were bound for the city the following day. There, he and his wife, Hazel, his stepdaughter, Alice, and a friend, Nora Clark-Kerr, would stay at a house loaned to them by El Menebhi, 'a rich Moor' whose portrait Lavery had painted. Moroccan hospitality was legendary, and from the moment of their arrival, they were treated royally, by dozens of richly attired servants. It is likely that from among this group he persuaded 'Jasmin' to sit for him.

The artist's brief second sojourn in Fez, mirrors that of the American novelist, Edith Wharton, the previous year. In her account, the 'Sultan's favourites' were dressed in 'pale rosy' ceremonial costumes with 'voluminous sleeves ... a thin black line as a pencilled eyebrow ... [while] ... over the forehead-jewel rose the complicated structure of the headdress ...' - each detail confirming what Lavery observes in Jasmin.

Yet for the painter, in these remarkable circumstances, normal studio practice prevailed and before embarking on the present canvas he produced a small sketch that establishes palette and design (fig 1).

While handling in the larger work is broadly similar, it is unlikely that two different women, identically dressed, posed for the painter. And although we can now approach the second group of Fez canvases with much more certainty, Jasmin, with her lips reddened with the juice of walnut bark, pencil-thin eyebrows and khol-black eyes, retains her mystery.

We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for compiling this catalogue entry.