Walter Sickert A.R.A. (British 1860-1942)
La Grande Rue, Dieppe
£12,500
Auction: 14 November 2019 from 13:00 GMT
Description
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
31.5cm x 39.3cm (12.5in x 15.5in)
Footnote
Provenance:
The Redfern Gallery, London;
Leicester Galleries, London;
The Piccadilly Gallery, London, 1963;
The Rt. Hon Lord Grimond of Firth M.P.;
Christie's, London, 23 March 1995, lot 72;
Private Collection.
Exhibited:
Probably Ernest, Brown & Phillips, Ltd., The Leicester Galleries, London, Modern English Pictures, March 1932, no. 115.
Walter Sickert visited Dieppe for the first time in 1879, and regularly returned to live and work there. This view shows La Grand Rue from the Place Nationale, and the shops lining the street receding into the background. Apart from extended stays in Venice, between 1898 and 1905, Sickert focussed most of his work on Dieppe and made many paintings in and around the Place Nationale. The concept of an empty foreground, receding street and flat front of shops was a technique that Sickert employed many times in his landscape works of the period, as in this painting.
From his first exhibition of work from Dieppe at the New English Art Club in 1891 his works attracted acclaim, the Sunday Times noting ‘Mr Walter Sickert…has never done anything better than ‘Dieppe’, a vivid vision of the place that palpitates with actuality, and is entirely pictorial’ (Sunday Times, 12 April 1891).