Girl in a red dress reading by a swimming pool

A woman in a bright red dress sits with her back to the viewer on a green folding chair, reading, whilst behind her bathers stand in the shallow water. No portrait, no grand gesture - just a private moment by the poolside, captured by John Lavery in 1936. It is precisely the vivid red that makes the scene so compelling: In the otherwise light surroundings, rendered in shades of grey and lilac, the eye is immediately drawn to the woman reading, whose face remains concealed. Her hand rests on her red hat, her dress falls in broad folds over the chair, and the bathers in the background blur into summery splashes of colour. Lavery, a native of Ireland and one of the most sought-after figure painters of his time, is focusing here less on the pool than on the light above it - the water and the light-coloured poolside merely form the tranquil backdrop for this focused, almost secluded figure. Even the signature in the bottom right-hand corner remains clearly legible on the reproduction.

Measuring 30 x 37 cm, this work is a cabinet piece, yet on the wall it appears more imposing than its dimensions would suggest. This is down to the frame: ‘Delfina’, a dark brown real wood moulding nearly five centimetres wide, wraps around the small work like a carved wreath, lending it a sense of substance. Step closer and you’ll discover the beaded edge along the inner rim and the places where the dark finish breaks up, revealing a reddish hue of the wood - these traces cluster at the corners, as if the frame itself had already lived through decades. It is precisely this sense of age on a small scale that suits the 1936 scene. The satin-finished Leonardo canvas carries the red of the dress richly and deeply, without reflecting light; without glass or a passe-partout, the picture sits directly within the dark frame. Thus it hangs on the light-coloured wall like a single splash of colour - you walk past, and the red draws you back.

From a distance of two metres, it is this contrast that stands out above all else: the heavy, dark wood on the outside, the summery, light-coloured basin on the inside, and, right in the middle, the woman reading, oblivious to it all.