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Etched within image “Wellington House” (reversed). Signed in pencil.
Provenance: with Ernest Brown & Phillips, London.
While a partially visible male figure is sitting and reading the newspaper on the foreground of the scene, a sullen girl has resigned herself to being dressed by an elder woman – perhaps her mother – in clothing appropriate for church. The depiction of a domestic interior and family dynamics puts this work in line with Sickert’s “observation of human drama within everyday modern life.” [1] The inscription “Wellington House” reveals that the setting was the artist’s studio at 247 Hampstead Road in London.
[1] Nicola Moorby, ‘Ennui c.1914 by Walter Richard Sickert’, catalogue entry, May 2004, in Helena Bonett, Ysanne Holt, Jennifer Mundy (eds.), The Camden Town Group in Context, Tate Research Publication, May 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/walter-richard-sickert-ennui-r1133434.
