A courtroom sketch of Roger Casement by the renowned Irish artist John Lavery, which has never been displayed in public before, is to be auctioned next month.
The original, on-the-spot study was part of the preparatory work for his painting The Hearing of the Appeal of Sir Roger Casement.
It will go under the hammer as part of a wider sale of the artist’s works by the British auctioneers Dreweatts and is expected to fetch between £15,000 (€17,500) and £25,000.
Jennie Fisher, co-head of Dreweatts Modern and Contemporary Art, said the preparatory study was “significant not only for its superb draughtsmanship but for its portrayal of a hugely important moment in Anglo-Irish history”.
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A former British diplomat turned Irish revolutionary, Roger Casement was convicted of treason for his part in the events that led to the Easter Rising and was hanged in London in 1916.
The judge who presided over his appeal, Charles Darling, invited Lavery into the courtroom to capture the proceedings as the artist had previously painted portraits of his family.
Art historian and Lavery expert Kenneth McConkey said “for those two days Lavery, accompanied by his wife Hazel, sat in the witness box recording the scene in the present sketch”.
“During the painful excursion into a legal precedent deriving from a 14th-century statute on treason, Lavery’s concentration on the scene before him was intense,” he said. “Although he made efforts to conceal his industry, the production of the present 10in x 14-in canvas board in an awkward space was detected by the press, as well as by the prisoner in the dock facing him.”
The finished final painting was completed in 1931 and was left to the British nation after the artist’s death. In 1950 it was lent to King’s Inns, Dublin, where it remains on indefinite loan.
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