Walter Richard Sickert, A.R.A

Mark Oliver, and thence by descent
Private Collection

Wendy Baron, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings, Yale University Press, London and New Haven, 2006, no.547.13, p.475, illustrated.

The canvas undulates slightly across the surface but is in good original condition. There are scattered tiny lines of craquelure, particularly in the upper right quadrant. There is no sign of retouching under ultra-violet light. Held in a carved wooden frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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'...I am the only one who will make money in this room...'
(Sickert to Oliver Brown on meeting him at the Casino, Dieppe, quoted in R.Shone, Sickert, exh.cat., Royal Academy, London, November 1992, p.268)

In 1920, Sickert was inspired to paint a dynamic new series of interiors that provide an interesting contrast to his more well known music hall and Camden Town works. During his extended stay in Dieppe from Spring 1919 to mid Summer 1922, it was the luxurious gaming rooms of the Casino at the end of the Rue Aguado that caught his eye. In particular, the fashionable characters who spent long evenings playing baccarat provided the genesis for the present work and others of the same title (see Baron, op.cit., nos. 543 - 547).

Sickert joined them on numerous occasions and although he initially sketched quite freely, Lillian Browse recounts that following a complaint from his friend Lady Blanche Hozier (Mrs Winston Churchill's mother), he adopted the method of sketching more secretly below the gaming tables on small cards (9 by 14cm.) to avoid any of the players being recognised. Several of these cards are now in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (see Baron, op.cit, no.543.3).

Within the opulent furnishings of the gaming room, the elegant silhouettes of the principal players and the traditional 18th century style uniforms of the attendants also provide an interesting social dialectic to the other Dieppe interiors that Sickert was painting at the same time, namely, those which focused on the popular cafe culture of the Café Vernet on the Quai Henri IV. Indeed, as Richard Shone has pointed out, Sickert would often spend the early part of the evening at Vernet's before moving on to the Casino when play began at midnight (see R. Shone, Sickert, exh. cat., Royal Academy, London, 1992, p.274). Vernet's was another epicentre of evening activity and illuminates an equally popular yet alternative pastime. Appositely, the more revealing dress of the cabaret performer in Au Caboulot au bout du Quai (c.1920, Coll. Montreal Museum of Arts) whose skirt is daringly shortened to just below her knees with her arms and shoulders bare provides an interesting comparison to the full length costume of the Baccarat player in the centre of the present work, bedecked with an elaborate wide-brimmed hat festooned with black feathers.   

We are grateful to Dr Wendy Baron for her kind assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.