Hazel Lavery

Life

Born in Chicago on 14 March 1880, Hazel Martyn was the daughter of Edward Jenner Martyn, a wealthy industrialist of Irish descent. A contemporary account refers to young Hazel Martyn as "The Most Beautiful Girl in the Midwest". Hazel had one sister, Dorothea Hope 'Dorothy' Martyn (1887–1911), who was an aspiring playwright. Suffering from anorexia nervosa, Dorothy died in 1911 aged 23, and it is her death that spurred Hazel to leave America.

In 1903, she married Edward Livingston Trudeau Jr, a physician who died five months later. They had one daughter, Alice, born 10 October 1904. While still married to Trudeau, she met John Lavery, a Catholic-born painter originally from Belfast. Her husband died shortly thereafter, and in 1909 she and Lavery married. Subsequently, she became Lavery's most frequent sitter.

During World War I, John Lavery became an official artist for the British government. In 1918, he received a knighthood, and Hazel Lavery became Lady Lavery.

The Laverys lent their palatial house at 5 Cromwell Place in South Kensington to the Irish delegation led by Michael Collins during negotiations for the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. After Lady Lavery died in 1935 in London, her funeral mass took place at the Brompton Oratory in Knightsbridge. She was buried with her husband in Putney Vale Cemetery. In Ireland, a memorial service for her took place at the request of the government.

Other portraits

Lady Lavery sat for more than 400 portraits by Sir John. Many were similarly named, leading an expert to remark that "Hazel in..." is virtually a Lavery trademark.

Lavery's biographer described "Hazel in rose and grey" as "One of the nicest of Lavery's "Hazel in" pictures. For once he abandons the full-length format and the composition gains a more curvy, dynamic appearance. Hazel, profiled by what photographers call a hair light, wears a wispy dress the colour of faded hydrangeas".

Another well-known portrait of Hazel Lavery painted by her husband is known as "The Red Rose" (1923). As one expert describes, this painting has a complicated history:

Her well-known face and the characteristic red, purple and gold colour harmonies make The Red Rose immediately recognizable as a portrait of her. However, the canvas was begun in 1892 as a portrait of Mrs William Burrell. In 1912 it was transformed into a portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, and in the early twenties it was, for a brief period, a portrait of Viscountess Curzon.

Correspondence

Lady Lavery knew many famous figures of her era and corresponded with such notable figures as Maurice Baring, Hilaire Belloc, Owen Buckmaster, Tim Healy, Shane Leslie, Reginald McKenna, Jessie Louisa Rickard, George Bernard Shaw, Lytton Strachey, Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson and W. B. Yeats.

This correspondence became public long after her death and reveals much about her personality and how she was regarded by her contemporaries. Amongst the events that are recounted are a visit to Ireland by the British Royal family, and her letters from Winston Churchill he confided in her his reservations about the creation of Northern Ireland.

Other correspondents speculated about Lady Lavery's relationship with Michael Collins and Kevin O'Higgins. According to the memoirs of Derek Patmore, a writer, artist, and interior designer who was a close friend of Lady Lavery's, Collins was "the great love in her life" and that Sir Shane "told me that when Michael Collins was killed in an ambush they found a miniature of Hazel hanging around his neck with a poem Shane Leslie had written to her on the back of it." Speculation about the relationship between Collins and Lady Lavery led a newspaper of the day to refer to her as his "sweetheart", an issue Collins wrote to his fiance Kitty Kiernan about. However, a 2006 book about Collins refutes this speculation.