Signed and dated Lessore 1919 (lower left).
Provenance: With Michael Parkin Fine Art Ltd, London.
Bonham’s Sale, Modern British and Irish Art, 18 September 2012, London, Knightsbridge, lot 96.
At the time of the present portrait in 1919, Sickert and his future wife Lessore were still only friends and colleagues; indeed, 59 years old and bearded, he was still married to his second wife, the young Christine Angus, who was suffering from tuberculosis from which she would die the following year. The artist suffered deeply from the loss of Christine and shaved his head and full beard as an expression of his grief. [1]
Two more watercolour portraits of Sickert by his future wife, both signed and dated 1919 like ours, represent him with the full beard, wearing the same beige suit and purple tie, suggesting that they were all made in the same sitting as our portrait in the artist's studio (one in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambrige, inv. PD.5-1997 and the other one in Manchester Art Gallery, inv. 1925.190). The Cambridge portrait, showing Sickert in three-quarter view seated on an armchair, features the artist with a grumpy expression and cartoon-like beard.
Thérèse Lessore was the youngest daughter of Jules Lessore, a painter and etcher who had moved to England in 1871. She went to the Slade and early in 1914 became a member, together with her first husband Bernard Adeney, of the newly founded London Group, and subsequently her work began to appear in many of the major avant-garde group exhibitions.
Lessore was first brought into Sickert’s circle as his student around 1910. He immediately spotted her talent and ‘admired [her] work enormously’ [2]. She had her first solo exhibition of paintings at the Eldar Gallery in London in 1918. Sickert contributed the exhibition catalogue's preface, in which he praised her "sense of design, her spare style, and her technical skill in extracting value from the interplay of coloured underpaintings and final coats of local colour" [3]. She had her first solo watercolour show in 1926. Sickert and Lessore married in 1926 and stayed together until Sickert’s death in 1942. According to Sylvia Gosse, “until Thérèse married Sickert her work was not in any way influenced by him, but after the marriage there was quite a change” [4].
Sold