Literature: Not in Baron 2006, but confirmed by her for the Sotheby's Sale in 2015.
Provenance: Anonymous; acquired by his mother in the 1980s and thence by descent;
Sotheby’s Sale, Modern & Post-War British Art, 17 - 18 November 2015, London, lot 141.
The present drawing represents part of the stalls and orchestra pit during a performance in the Old Middlesex chamber hall in London, where Sickert was a regular. Located in Drury Lane, the Old Middlesex was often called The Old Mo, after the Old Mogul Tavern that started it as the Mogul Saloon in 1847. It became the Middlesex Music Hall a few years later. In 1911, the Old Middlesex was rebuilt and transformed into the New Middlesex Theatre of Varieties. Today it is the Gillian Lynne Theatre.
The view is taken either from the circle or the balcony on the left of the stage. The presence of a matchbox inside an ashtray and a poster of the show with two dancers in the bottom right hand corner of the image increases our spatial perception of the theatre.
The drawing is one of the composition studies
for the painting The Old Middlesex, executed by Sickert in 1906 (The
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB, Canada; Baron
2006, n. 282) and the prints of the same title that followed it [1]
The drawing of the same title displayed in our exhibition probably features some
of the first sketches for the present drawing, such as the detail of the wind musician. The etching Noctes Ambrosianae, also displayed in our exhibition, represents the top balconies of the same chamber hall, perhaps taken from the
same point of view as the present drawing.
£ 18,500.-