The Private View [after Georgie Bowers]

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Scotland Office, Dover House, Whitehall

Born in Munich, Walter Richard Sickert was a British artist of mixed Dutch and Danish parentage. He abandoned an acting career in 1881 to briefly enter the Slade School of Art in London, before apprenticing under James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) in 1882. During a visit to Paris in 1883, he was introduced to Edgar Degas who inspired Sickert's practice of using figure and location drawings made ‘on the spot’ to produce finished paintings back in the studio. During the 1890s he chiefly painted portraits in London and townscapes in Dieppe. From 1905 he lived in the Camden Town area and in 1911 established the Camden Town group of artists. In 1934 Sickert moved to Broadstairs in Kent with Thérèse Lessore, his third wife, and then again near Bath in 1938. He received few official honours in his lifetime but a major retrospective of his work was held before his death, with posthumous exhibitions at Tate Britain in 1960, and the Courtauld Gallery, London, in 2007–2008.

Places

England, London, Burlington House, Royal Academy of Arts

Subjects

painting (as Subject), paper (as Subject), genre, Camden Town Group, man, woman, crowd, 19th century costume, dress, top hat, bonnet, fan, gallery, museum, gallery space

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Walter Richard Sickert (1860 - 1942)

Title

The Private View [after Georgie Bowers]

Date

c.1930

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 51.00 cm, width: 76.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Leicester Galleries, May 1962

Inscription

bl: After / Georgie Bowers ; br: Sickert

Provenance

With the Leicester Galleries, London; by whom donated to The Greek Earthquake Appeal; by whom sold through Sotheby's, London, 'Pictures, Sculpture and Antiques: The Greek Earthquake Appeal' sale, on 5 October 1954 (Lot 22); collection of A. Koestler; from whom purchased by the Leicester Galleries, London; from whom purchased by the Ministry of Works in May 1962

GAC number

5796