Stock Photo - Under the Cherry Tree (1884). Lavery, Sir John 1856-1941. Born in Belfast, Lavery began his artistic training in Glasgow. During the early 1880s he studied in Paris and made visits to the artists? colony at Grez-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau. At Grez Lavery was one of many young artists to set up their easels in the fields around the picturesque village and work en plein-air, a term used to describe painting in the open air. Under the Cherry Tree is larger and more ambitious than any Lavery had previously attempted. It is a youthful masterwork, heavily influenced by Bastien-Lepage and was intended to display the painterly techniques he had recently acquired through study in France. The composition of Under the Cherry Tree is divided into three distinct areas and Lavery employed a different technique in the painting of each.