The Artist's Studio (1913) by John Lavery

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(The most important painting in all Anglo-Irish-American history)

A mid-afternoon luscious canvas light
September grapes are served to wet the sitter’s lips
the sweet peace of London’s innocent pre-war year
images of empire fading into their own shade
a golden impression of this loving moment
Hazel Lavery before she was Queen of Ireland
approaching the pinnacle of her silken promise

In all its casual splendour it reveals
confident and deliberate passions
scarlet tipped the toe the hem-raised heels
the Moorish maid distracted by Eileen’s pilgrim look
filling his invention of himself
the important women in John Lavery’s life
and in the mirror just himself
younger than his years and just the two of them
the patient painter
and his turban’d purple wife

How many strokes of brush and twist of oily paint
drawn from the heart of this trying household tell
the true story of preparation toil and triumph won
and not for themselves alone
their art is there for everyone
and as it slowly hangs and slowly tells its tale
their romance blooming its own timeless poem
wrapped in all its purple all its chestnut might
so we can love forever
these pale lineaments caught in a shower of varnished light

Hazel artist hostess muse and diplomat
made herself that dress she wears with regal feather’d hat
the Moorish maid is dressed as Moorish maids are not
daughter and step-daughter in delicate threads
he touches them with her red and purple seam
one placed another displaced to make way for Hazel

Alice alone their story told before she had to go
as best she could how history came and nested in this studio
determined enemies Dukes Earls and Excellencies
moved within five Winter weeks from hate mistrust and war
to a deed of peace with rebels they had hunted only days before
it was not by spy nor accident nor after bullied fight
but the arm’s length kiss of an artist’s brush
his stroke of rich delight

On water draped a world away these images dream and rhyme 
where the soft caress of her silken dress are the oars of a hopeful time
we are judged by this paint and compared to its gift challenged by every hue
its passion will carry you over the weir its art and its history through
the rapids will tell of their fury’d hearts, the gullies of power surging past
the desire and the magic that drove them
the artist has painted to last