Walter Richard Sickert, A.R.A.

J.W. Blyth Esq.
His sale, Sotheby's London, 15th April 1964, lot 16
Zwemmer Gallery, London, where acquired by Mrs Lewis Cohen
Sale, Sotheby's London, 10th June 1998, lot 108, where acquired by the present owner

London, Saville Gallery, Paintings by Richard Sickert ARA, 1930, cat. no.21;
Eastbourne, Towner Art Gallery & Guildford House, Sickert in Dieppe, 31st May - 6th July 1975, cat. no.64;
London, Royal Academy, Sickert Paintings, 20th November 1992 - 14th February 1993, cat. no.96, with tour to Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Wendy Baron, Sickert, Phaidon, London, 1973, p.378, cat. no.397;
Richard Shone, Walter Sickert, Phaidon, London, 1988, illustrated pl.59;
Wendy Baron and Richard Shone, Sickert Paintings, New Haven and London, 1992, p.270;
David Peters Corbett, Sickert, London, 2001, p. fig.42, illustrated;
Wendy Baron, Sickert, Paintings and Drawings, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2006, cat. no.582, pp.495-6, illustrated.

The canvas is lined. There are two pin holes at the upper horizontal edge of the painting which appear to be consistent with the artist's working method. There are scattered areas of paint cracking across the composition. Subject to the above the work appears to be in good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals scattered areas of florescence across the work, including at the upper right vertical edge, at the upper left corner, in the figures at the left of the scene, with further spots towards the bottom of the composition. These appear to indicate sensitively executed areas of retouching. The work is presented in an ornate gilt frame. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Sickert had a lasting fascination with the fashionable French seaside resort of Dieppe, the basis of which forms the subject of a major forthcoming exhibition at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester later this year. Having first visited during his childhood, he returned in the early 1880s, spending his honeymoon there in 1885 and returning almost every summer until he was well into his sixties. Here he forged a new style that brought together the best of British and European influences, creating new and exciting works that challenged the idea of modernist figurative painting at the time.

Painted around the time of his wife’s death in 1920, Vernet’s Dieppe is an important work from the artist’s final period in the area, ranked by Wendy Baron as ‘among the most productive of Sickert’s career as a painter’ (Wendy Baron, Sickert, Phaidon, London, 1973, p.159). This period was marked by a reinvigoration of his approach, reaffirming his commitment and fascination with the cosmopolitan world which had been the earliest source of inspiration for his Camden Town interiors. His depictions of the fashionable set of Dieppe recalls the colour and drama of his earlier music hall interiors of The Old Bedford of The Middlesex, as well as anticipating the artist’s later interest in the aristocracy as a source of (often ironic) subject matter.  

Vernet’s café lay on the quai Henri IV, which runs along the north shore of Dieppe’s outer port, and was a popular café chantant among the international beau monde who frequented the town in summer months. During the day it was a popular bistro, catering largely to locals, but by night it exploded with colourful costumes and loud music that attracted a far more cosmopolitan crowd, the sort that one would not be surprised to find in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting. It was here that Sickert used to spend his evening before going on to the local casino, where play did not begin until midnight, and where he rubbed shoulders with some of the most fashionable names of British and French society.

Sickert would have certainly been drawn to the activity and nightlife of Vernet’s, and throughout the early 1920s made a series of small pencil studies of its guests, often on cards that he could easily conceal in his hand, many of which today are housed in the collection of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. The paintings of this period represent a new vein in Sickert's work, depicting the tawdry glamour of the music hall, with the performer just out of sight of the canvas on the far right whilst the onlookers enjoying the risqué atmosphere, are by no means part of the action.