Walter Sickert ARA,
British 1860-1942 -
 
Alla Pescheria, c.1903-04;
 

Walter Sickert ARA,

British 1860-1942 -

Alla Pescheria, c.1903-04;

oil on canvas, signed 'Sickert' lower right, 47 x 57.7 cm

Provenance: with Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 21 June 1909, lot 29 (unsold); with Beaux Arts, London; Dr Robert Emmons; with Mayor Gallery, London; with Anthony d'Offay, London; Sir Tristan Antico, Sydney; his sale, Sotheby's, London, 22 June 1994, lot 53; with Fine Art Society, London; Christie's, London, 17th November 2006, lot 46, where purchased by the present owner

Literature: Exhibition catalogue, Spring, London, Fine Art Society, 1995, no.52, illus.; W. Baron, Sickert Paintings and Drawings, New Haven and London, 2006, p.301, no.227, illus.

Exhibited: Paris, Bernheim Jeune, Sickert, January 1907, no.74; Paris, Bernheim Jeune, Sickert, June 1909, no.29; London, Thos. Agnew & Sons, Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings from the collection of Robert Emmons, 1947, no.41; Brighton, Royal Pavilion, Paintings and Drawings, 1962, no.49 (lent by Mayor Gallery); Australia, Sydney, David Jones' Art Gallery, Sickert, August 1980, no.14; Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 'Sickert in Venice', 4th March - 7th June 2009, no.37, illus. p.118

Note: This work was painted in Venice, where the artist regularly visited and depicted throughout his career. Due to early bad weather, during his stay from 1903-04, Sickert focused for the first time on the citizens of Venice, rather than the city itself, looking at working people in their ordinary daily environments. These works would pave the way for the realist interiors of the highly influential Camden Town Group, which the artist founded with Robert Bevan, Harold Gilman and Spencer Gore.

The paintings composition, with its restricted and angular view of the figure, creates a sense of the scene as a glimpsed moment, recalling the influence of Edgar Degas on the artist. The resulting work is a heavily atmospheric and enigmatic scene, with the figures thoughts and intentions obscured, and indecipherable to the viewer. The painting was twice exhibited at the celebrated Bernheim Jeune Gallery in Paris, known for promoting the work of key Impressionist and post-Impressionist painters early in their careers, including Paul Cezanne, Amedeo Modigliani and Georges Seurat. The work was also exhbited recently as part of an important show at the Dulwich Picture Gallery focusing on Sickert in Venice.

Works by Sickert are currently held in all major UK collections including the Tate, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and V & A. Sickert's work is the subject of a major upcoming retrospective at the Tate Britain, opening in April 2022.