Literature: Exhibition Catalogue, Sickert Paintings, edited by W. Baron and R. Shone, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1992, mentioned in the catalogue no. 87, illustrated p. 250, fig. 174.
Provenance: with the Jonathan Clark Gallery, London, in 1992;
Chiswick's Sale, Modern & Post-War British Art, 3 December 2020, London, lot 74.
Since meeting Sickert in the winter of 1913-14, Thérèse Lessore frequently represented theatre and cinema interiors. Doubtlessly, Sickert encouraged his future wife to visit the New Bedford Theatre which had replaced the Old Bedford in 1899. Starting from 1907, Sickert himself represented the boxes of the New Bedford and its caryatids several times from very similar view points to Lessore's (Baron 2006, n. 298). In 1914, Sickert was commissioned with "painting scenes of the New Bedford around the upper walls of Miss [Ethel] Sands's dining-room in her newly built Georgian-style house at 15 Avenue, Chelsea" (Baron 2006, p. 104). Despite the initial excitement and several preparatory studies (Baron 2006, nn. 470-471), in 1918 Sickert had still failed to produce the three mantelpiece wall paintings that he had promised. "He probably intended to finish his pictures in oil, but in the event he abandoned the project (and Ethel eventually commissioned the more reliable decorators Duncan Grants and Vanessa Bell to produce murals for her dining-room)" (Baron 2006, p. 104).
£ 6,800.-