Lavery rose to prominence as a painter of society portraits and contemporary scenes during the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888. His determination to paint led him from his native Ireland to Glasgow where he tinted photographs to finance his art classes. He studied in London and Paris, returning to Glasgow in 1885. Lavery befriended the artists known as the Glasgow Boys, with whom he shared an interest in subjects from modern life. He enjoyed great success after his move to London in 1896, where he combined his talents as a portrait painter with an interest in contemporary events. Lavery was knighted in 1918.
The Glasgow Boys were a loose group of young artists that represented the beginnings of modernism in Scottish painting. In the early 1880s, 'the boys’ were united by their disillusionment with traditional academic painting, with its strong focus on historical subjects and high levels of finish. Instead, they painted contemporary rural subjects, often working out of doors and painting directly onto the canvas.
