Title - The Spanish Coast from Tangier, Trafalgar Bay in the distance(1920)

Artist - Sir John Lavery

Immediately after his arrival in Tangier in 1891, Lavery ascended to the roof of his hotel to paint views of the city. Overlooking Andalusia and the Rock of Gibraltar, Tangier was a captivating presence - one to which the painter must return. Thereafter, the city gave Lavery an inexhaustible supply of motifs and in the early years of the new century, when he was a busy portrait painter with an international clientele, it helped to re-sensitise an eye made dull by the rituals of the London studio. Set against the opals and azures of the Straits, gleaming in the mid-day sun, it was dubbed by the painter's friend, the Scottish adventurer Laird of Gartmore, R.B. Cunninghame Graham, as 'the White City'. And Lavery's imposing panoramic depiction of 1893, of the old city, its buildings and beach, bears this title.