PHILIP WILSON STEER, O.M., N.E.A.C. | DOMINO

Leonard F. Harrison;

Wooley & Wallis, Salisbury, 10 December 2014, lot 301

London, National Gallery of Britain, Paintings Since Whistler, 1940;

CEMA, Wilson Steer exhibition, 1943-44, no.12;

Temple Newsam, Philip Wilson Steer Exhibition, 1944

Steer’s title is from The Black Domino (a popular play at London’s Adelphi Theatre), the plot of which hinges around the heroine’s use of a cloak, or ‘domino’, to disguise her identity at a masquerade. She holds a mask in her hand. Another version of the subject – larger, and less immediate, was exhibited at the New English Art Club in 1904 as The Black Domino - it was formerly in the Forbes Collection at Battersea House (Edinburgh, Lyon & Turnbull, 1 November 2011, lot 36). The model for both versions, and several other pictures by Steer of about this time, has been identified as Theodora Bennett, who was born in 1879 and lived near Steer’s house and studio in Cheyne Walk.