Queen Mary (1867-1953)

Lavery's portrait of Queen Mary in 1913 formed part of an ambitious royal commission to paint the entire family of George V, culminating in the celebrated group portrait now at the National Portrait Gallery. Queen Mary — born Princess Victoria Mary of Teck — was by 1913 a composed and formidable consort who had helped modernise the public presentation of the monarchy following the relative informality of the Edwardian court. Lavery approached royal portraiture with genuine skill: he understood that the genre required a balance between grandeur and accessibility, and his Impressionist-inflected handling provided a freshness that distinguished his work from the more formulaic official portraits of his predecessors. The canvas is held in the Royal Collection.

Lavery employed a warm, generous light source to model the Queen's features, applying paint with controlled confidence in the face and allowing looser handling in the surrounding dress and setting. The palette is rich but not oppressive, with jewel tones in dress and accessories offset by the soft neutrals of a formal interior background.