Lot 1829
WALTER RICHARD SICKERT, ARA (1860-1942)
SECOND COURSE, DEIN FREUND (AFTER ADELAIDE CLAXTON)
Signed and inscribed Dein Freund and After "Adelaide" Claxton, oil on canvas
40 x 50cm.
Exhibited: London, Leicester Galleries, Summer Exhibition, 1935, no.106; Leicester Galleries, 1936, no.46, bt. by Countess of Oxford and Asquith; Arts Council of Great Britain, Late Sickert, 1981-1982, no. 86
Literature: Wendy Baron, Sickert, Paintings and Drawings (New Haven and London, 2006), p.514, ref.655
Provenance: Margot, Countess of Oxford and Asquith; from whom acquired by the Earl and Countess Jowitt; thence by descent
* Baron dates this to `by 1935` based upon its exhibition history but records the measurements as 57 x 67.5cm (which is the overall frame size). It is an example of one of Sickert's `Echoes`, an unexpected late-career diversion into the re-interpretation of Victorian genre subjects, often copied from prints, that seemed to abhor modern subject matter whilst negating the artist's well proven inspiration for inventive themes. Nonetheless, the pictures sold well in the 1930s: collectors admired Sickert's love of theatrical compositions and his apparent fondness for subjects from an unreachably better past. They found his colour expressive and innovative and the richer pigments were far removed from the earthier palette of his Camden Town era. In essence, the Echoes showed a startling exuberance, a revived energy and a replenished vigour for the pure potential of paint.
"Until the Late Sickert exhibition of 1981 there had been little opportunity, since their first showing in Sickert's lifetime, to see the later paintings in any substantial numbers. In spite of attracting one or two prophetic apologists, the work had been edited from the Sickert canon in the forty years after his death. People either followed the accepted line of dismissal or ignored it as an unknown quantity. Noted Sickert enthusiasts drew a veil over the last fifteen years of his output, though Wendy Baron wrote in 1960 that the `Echoes` and similar works were `perhaps the most stimulating, visually, of Sickert's entire career. At the time of its production [...] Press coverage was immense. Sickert was interviewed, profiled and photographed to a degree that would astonish the public of today." (Richard Shone, Walter Sickert, Oxford, 1988).
