Signed in pen and ink with monogram and dedicated To Evelyn Paul / W.S.” (lower right), inscribed in pencil "40 Brys. Sq." (lower left).
Lettered below the image “Noctes Ambrosianae” (centre) and “Sickert” (right).
This is the only known impression of the second state (of three), before the second application of aquatint.
Watermark: VAN GELDER ZONEN.
Literature: Bromberg 129, II/III, this impression cited and illustrated p.124.
Sale Catalogue, The Fine Art Society, The Ruth and Joseph Bromberg Collection of Sickert Prints and Drawings, London, 2004, n. 36, illustrated.
Baron 2006, n. 280.9.
Provenance: Given by the artist to Evelyn Paul (1883 - London - 1963);
The Ruth and Joseph Bromberg Collection;
With the Fine Art Society, London in 2004.
The print represents one of the top balconies of the Old Middlesex Music Hall in London, where Sickert was a regular. [1] The crowded audience belongs to the poorest Londoner classes, relegated to the cheapest part of the theatre with a reduced view of the stage. Such subject conveys Sickert’s interest for both the theatre and identity within the social classes, a matter that would be extensively explored by the Camden Town Group just a few years later. The title Noctes Ambrosianae derives from a series of imaginary dialogues that supposedly took place in the Ambrose’s Tavern, published by the Blackwood’s Magazine between 1822 and 1835.
The print is related to an oil on canvas of the same title (Nottingham City Museum, NCM 1952-49) painted by Sickert in 1906, and to several preparatory drawings (Baron 2006, pp. 330-331, No. 280). The same view, framed vertically and with a few differences, is also the subject of another print by the artist titled “The Old Mogul Tavern”, another name for the Middlesex Music Hall. The two drawings displayed in our exhibition, both titled "The Old Middlesex", represent the stalls and the orchestra pit of the same chamber hall, perhaps taken from the same point of view as the present etching.
The present impression is dedicated to artist Evelyn Paul (1883 - London - 1963), who studied at the South Kensington School of Art and is best known as an illustrator and book illuminator. Evelyn Paul apparently lived at 40 Bryanston Square.
A true artist’s proof, folded in four, with a counterproof or offset of a partially visible impression of the same print on the recto on the right. Very intense burr. On a full sheet. On the verso, the offset of part of a newspaper.
£ 12,500.-