Hazel Lavery

Hazel Lavery, Lady Lavery (née Martyn; 1880–1935) was an American painter and the second wife of portrait artist Sir John Lavery. Famed for her beauty, Lavery's likeness appeared on banknotes of Ireland for much of the 20th century.

Early 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 was her death that spurred Hazel to leave America. They had one daughter, Alice, born 10 October 1904

Hazel Martyn first met John Lavery, a Catholic-born painter, originally from Belfast whilst engaged to Trudeau. 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.

Hazel Lavery died of a heart attack on 3 January 1935 at her home in London, having been suffering ill health for over a year after an operation to remove a wisdom tooth, with her husband and daughter at her side.

Irish banknotes

After the Anglo-Irish treaty, the Irish Free State government invited John Lavery to create an image of a female personification of Ireland for the new Irish banknotes. Such a personification harks back to figures in ancient Irish mythology and has been exemplified in recent centuries by women such as James Clarence Mangan's Dark Rosaleen and W. B. Yeats' Cathleen Ní Houlihan.

Other portraits

Lady Lavery sat for more than 400 portraits by Sir John. and her letters from Winston Churchill in which he confided in her his reservations about the creation of Northern Ireland.

Rumoured affair 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 fiancé Kitty Kiernan about.

Historian Meda Ryan has cast doubts on these rumours. Ryan states that "in all the research I have done, I have found no evidence whatsoever that he had an affair with Lady Lavery". Emmet Dalton, a close associate of Collins who was with him during the period when the supposed affair happened, says he saw no evidence of an affair. Todd Andrews states that such an affair would have been against the code of conduct of the IRA and that it would not have been tolerated. Ryan also states that correspondence between Collins and Kitty Kiernan in this period shows that their relationship was solid.

Art Depicting Hazel Lavery