110547

Corina Kavanagh de Ham, née Corina Kavanagh Lynch 1921

Half-length slightly to the left, looking full face to the viewer, wearing a blue silk off the shoulder evening gown embroidered with gold and a pearl necklace, her hands to her breast, holding a black chiffon stole wrapped round her shoulders.

Oil on canvas, 80 x 63 cm (31 ½ x 24 ¾ in.)

Indistinctly inscribed lower left: de László / LONDON. 1921

Sitters’ Book II, f. 19: Cora Ham. / Dec 18. 1920. 

Kavanagh Building Consortium

Little is known of the arrangements made for this commission. It is difficult to decipher the year of this portrait on the canvas, but the artist’s appointment books for 1920 and 1921 indicate that he painted her on 16, 17 and 18 December.^[1] Given that her portrait is only half-length, it is likely that no further sittings were required. However, Corina Ham, her husband, or both visited de László on 28 January.^[2] It is most likely that the picture was signed then, when the paint underneath was dry.

In 1924, the sitter was in correspondence with the artist regarding the possibility of his painting a portrait of Isabel Hope [110458], who also lived in Buenos Aires.^[3]

Corina ‘Cora’ Kavanagh was born on 20 February 1890, the eldest child of John Patrick Kavanagh Machierman (1863-1922) and his wife Elisa Lynch Byrne. Her parents had emigrated from Ireland to Argentina^[4] where they became prosperous landowners. She had one brother, Diego. Her mother died young, but her father continued to be protective of his pretty daughter and carefully selected the few people she met. On 20 July 1912, she married Guillermo Ham Kenny (1859-1928), also of Irish descent. A close friend of the family, he was a millionaire landowner, older than Corina Kavanagh’s father. The couple had no children. When her husband died, she married the physician who had attended him to the end, Guillermo Mainini Ríos. This marriage was declared null and void by the Church. On 17 March 1938, she married for a third time, Gustavo Casares Lynch (1892-1959). Their marriage too turned out to be unsuccessful.

Corina Kavanagh had inherited a large fortune from her first husband. She enjoyed expensive jewellery, society, and travelled widely. She was closely associated with the building of the Kavanagh Tower^[5] in central Buenos Aires, a 120-metre-high residential block comprising 105 luxury apartments on twenty-nine floors. She reserved for herself the entire 14th floor, although she never lived there, preferring a beautiful house in the district of Olivos, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.^[6] The construction of the Kavanagh Building took only fourteen months and was completed in 1936. It was at the time the highest reinforced concrete structure in the world and was the tallest building in South America for many years. Corina Kavanagh is said to have sold several family estancias and invested the majority of her wealth, when she was thirty-nine years old, to pay for its construction. South America’s first skyscraper, it has been described as a hybrid of the Modernist and Art Deco styles. Overlooking the Plaza San Martín, it completely obscured the view of the Basílica del Santísimo Sacramento from the Anchorena Palace,^[7] and the choice of this site for the construction of such a monumental building was interpreted by many as a slight on the Anchorena family.^[8] 

Corina Kavanagh died on 18 February 1984 in Buenos Aires.

LITERATURE:

•Dodero, Alberto, and Philippe Cros, 1889-1939: Argentina The Golden Years, El Ateneo, 2007, p. 330, ill.

•László, Philip de, 1920 appointment book, private collection

•László, Philip de, 1921 appointment book, private collection

•DLA015-0041, letter from de László to Cora Ham, 22 February 1924

With our grateful thanks to Cristina O’Farrell de Gutiérrez Zaldivar for her invaluable assistance in preparing the biography for this entry.

SMdeL 2011