14 by 10in. (35.6 by 25.4cm)

Title: DOS CIGARRERAS
Note: At the end of March 1892, Lavery and his painter-friend, Alexander Mann, left Tangier to travel up through Spain, en route to Scotland, stopping first in Seville. In a letter, Mann reported, We have had splendid weather since coming to Seville. Almost too hot in fact. We have got to like the place better and Lavery speaks of returning next year. He has been sketching a lot at the tobacco factory … (1)They remained in Seville for up to two weeks while Lavery visited the huge Real Fábrica de Tabacos - the Royal Tobacco Factory - producing small oil sketches of the cigarreras as they sat at large tables hand-rolling cigars. Over three thousand were thus employed in the 1890s and an experienced cigar maker could produce up to 500 cigars a day. In the popular imagination, Bizet's volatile Carmen typified these women and some censorious British visitors were intent on describing the factory as a massive 'harem' and a 'depressing spectacle'. (2) Others found it a 'charming scene of labour', in which 'the murmur of conversation never ceases', in the enlightened working conditions that permitted cigarreras to bring their infants to the work table - managers being compelled to supply cradles for babies. (3)By 1892 the great factory was already becoming a tourist attraction and it is not surprising that artists were among its first visitors - yet it waited until 1915 for Gonzalo Bilbao Martinez to provide the large, definitive rendition of the scene (Fig 1). Five small sketches of cigar workers by Lavery are known - one of which depicts the interior from a viewpoint not dissimilar to that of the later Bilbao. Whether the painter considered a large work representing one of the 'vast chambers' remains conjecture. In May 1892 he moved on to Madrid to register as a copyist at the Prado, and although he travelled back to Glasgow through Spain the following year, a stop at Seville is not recorded. Although unsigned, the provenance of the present sketch is impeccable - Mrs Diana Blackwood (née Dickinson) being the first of the artist's three granddaughters. It was seen by the author in one of the family collections prior to its sale in 2010.Prof Kenneth McConkeyFebruary 2020Footnotes:1. Martin Hopkinson introd., Alexander Mann, 1853-1908, Sketches and Correspondence with his Wife and Family, 1985 (exhibition catalogue, Fine Art Society), n.p. Mann worked in nearby streets and villages while Lavery frequented the factory; see also Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, 2020, (Atelier Books, Edinburgh), p. 62. 2.Edward Hutton, The Cities of Spain, 1906 (Methuen, 1907ed.), p. 201.3. Havelock Ellis, The Soul of Spain, 1908 (Constable & Co, 1924 ed.), p. 89; G Gascoigne Hartley, Things Seen in Spain, 1912 (Seeley & Co), p. 177.

oil on canvas board

with typed James Bourlet [London] label on reverse [Property of Mrs Blackwood]