Emanuel von Baeyer
London • • •

Signed in pencil and inscribed The Fiddler 1918

Literature:    Sale Catalogue, Michael Parkin Gallery, Sylvia Gosse 1881-1968. Paintings and Prints, London, 1989, n. 106.

                    Exhibition Catalogue, Exhibition of Etchings and Lithography by Miss Sylvia Gosse, A.R.E., P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London 1925.

Provenance:    T & R Annan, Glasgow;

Ewan Mundy Fine Art.

In this etching, Gosse depicts a man nicknamed ‘Old Heffel’, who was presumably beggar fiddler. Walter Sickert made a series of paintings and etchings c. 1916–19 of the same man, including Old Heffel of Rowton House c.1916 (Dunedin Public Art Gallery, reproduced in W. Baron, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings, London 2006, no.457.1). Gosse probably drew Old Heffel in one of the Rowton House hostels, which had been set up in the late nineteenth century by the philanthropist Lord Rowton to house working men. One of the hostels, Arlington House, was built in 1905 in Camden Town; it is likely that this is the location depicted.[1]

In 1909, Sylvia Gosse began studying etching after meeting Walter Sickert. She was taught by him first at the Westminster Technical Institute and then at his new etching school at 209 Hampstead Road which soon expanded the curriculum to include drawing and painting. She began teaching at the school in 1910 when she also became a partner there (it was renamed the ‘Sickert and Gosse School of Painting and Etching’). Sylvia’s style was hugely influenced by Sickert; she adopted his choices of subject matter and working practices.[2]

In 1926, Gosse was elected a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. There are collections of her prints and drawings in the British Museum, London and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. [3]