Sir John Lavery RA RSA RHA (20 March 1856 – 10 January 1941) was an Irish painter best known for his portraits and wartime depictions.

William Burrell, a wealthy shipowner, was a faithful patron of Scottish artists including Joseph Crawhall II, with whom Lavery studied.

[3] From 1910, he painted portraits of notable subjects including Winston Churchill, H. H. Asquith, Lord Derby, and the Irish politicians John Redmond and Edward Carson.

During the war years, he was a close friend of the Asquith family and spent time with them at their Sutton Courtenay Thames-side residence, painting their portraits and idyllic pictures like Summer on the River (Hugh Lane Gallery).

In 1929, Lavery made substantial donations of his work to both The Ulster Museum and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery and in the 1930s he returned to Ireland.

Lavery's first wife, Kathleen MacDermott, whom he married in 1889, died of tuberculosis in 1891, shortly after the birth of their daughter, Eileen (later Lady Sempill, 1890–1935).

In 1909 Lavery remarried, to Hazel Martyn (1886–1935), an Irish-American known for her beauty and poise, who had a daughter, Alice Trudeau (Mrs. Jack McEnery, from 1963 Mrs Denis Rolleston Gwynn) (1904-1991) from a previous marriage.

[10] Sir John Lavery died in Rossenarra House, Kilmoganny, County Kilkenny on 10 January 1941, aged 84, from natural causes, and was interred in Putney Vale Cemetery.