Irish Lady Lavery Pound Note SUPERB 1976 Start Price USD 29.00 Current Price USD 29.00 Time Left - Bid Count 0 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Sunday, June 29, 2008 End Time Sunday, July 06, 2008 Location West Coast of Clare See more about 'Irish Lady Lavery Pound Note SUPERB 1976' Description   Irish 'Lady Lavery' Pound Note SUPERB 1976   Click to View Image Album      Dated 30th September 1976 This is a GORGEOUS note - IN CRISP UNCIRCULATED CONDITION These notes were introduced in 1928.   A beautiful woman was symbolic of the New Ireland (Hazel, Lady Lavery being the model).  See below.   As in early Irish literature Ireland was represented allegorically as a woman, for example Roisin Dubh - Dark Rosaleen.  These notes were changed in 1977 with a Queen Medb note and finally all £1 (one pound) notes were replaced with a £1 decimal coin in 1990. This is a genuine original 36 year old note with watermark.   Lady Hazel Lavery   Hazel Lavery, through her father, Edward Jenner Martyn, could trace her roots back to Galway in the Middle Ages, the family had been among the earliest settlers in America.  Once voted "the most beautiful girl in the Midwest", Hazel had been married, widowed, and jilted on the eve of a second wedding - all in the US - before becoming the wife of Belfast born painter Sir John Lavery and visiting Ireland for the first time in 1913.  She immediately fell in love with the country, moved her birthday from March 14th to 17th, and declared herself - after her extraordinary apprenticeship - to be a "simple Irish girl".  Between then and her death from TB in 1935, she was a central figure in Irish life.  The Lavery home in London played host to many of the greatest artists, writers and politicians of the day, most notably around the time of the 1921 Treaty negotiations. Her intense relationship with Michael Collins - he had a letter to "Hazel dearest" on his body when he was killed - was a source of rumours in the 1920s and long after.  And yet the process by which she ended up on the Irish banknotes was shrouded in some secrecy.  It was a matter of record that John Lavery was commissioned to paint the archetypal Irish colleen demanded by the brief, and he was well known for using his wife as a model.  Yet when the notes appeared in 1928, and The Irish Times suggested the obvious, the Minister for Finance, Ernest Blythe insisted the figure was not Lady Lavery and "does not bear the slightest resemblance to her".  In fact Thomas Bodkin had not only persuaded the Currency Commission to use one of Lavery's portraits of his wife, but opposed the painter's own suggestion of a competition, on the grounds that he didn't trust the commissioner's judgement.  In a letter to the lady herself, Bodkin wrote:  "Their award would probably favour a portrait of some farmer's daughter.  They are men of business but, emphatically, not men of taste.  I know them all".  The mixture of official denials and criticism of her rumoured involvement stung Hazel's vanity, however.  In the midst of the controversy, she circulated a studio portrait of herself.  The Irish Times got hold of a copy and reproduced it, side by side with the currency portrait.  The paper was subsequently prosecuted under the Forgery Act for reproducing a bank-note, and had to apologise.  But the point had been made. Still bristling, Lady Lavery wrote again to Bodkin on the subject of the (separate) female in the watermark of the first notes, said to be modelled on the Italian wife of an Irish sculptor.  "Do find out if the fat female symbolical figure of Erin in the watermark is a portrait of the late Mrs Hogan", she commanded.  Measures:  6.00" X 3.25". Condition:  MINT! PLEASE NOTE WORLD WIDE SHIPPING RATE IF YOU LIVE ON THE ISLAND OF IRELAND DIVIDE THE RATE IN HALF. Allow $4.00 for insurance, packing and shipping.   Good Luck! Payment       I accept the following forms of payment: PayPalPersonal Check       FREE scheduling, supersized images and templates. Get Vendio Sales Manager.  FREE scheduling, supersized images and templates. Get Vendio Sales Manager. Over 100,000,000 served. Get FREE counters from Vendio today! Place a Bid!