Walter Sickert

Watermark: dandy roll: "[...] ES". Full text, in cursive script, is cut off.
Sickert's early landscapes are almost all of locations in Dieppe, France, as is Le Mont de Neuville, which depicts a steeply inclined street in the fisherman's quarter of Dieppe, Le Pollet, which Sickert frequently studied (Baron 1973, p. 38, 308; Baron 2006, p. 203, under cat. 85, related drawing 11). This drawing appears to be most closely related to a painted version of Le Mont de Neuville dated ca. 1892-4, now in a private collection in South Africa (Baron 1973, pp. 308-9, cat. 66, repr.; Baron 2006, p. 203, cat. 85). Both the drawing and the painting present views of the street from the same perspective, and the cart to the right of the painting appears lightly drawn in the middle of the street in the Morgan sheet. The painting's blurred, impressionistic brushstrokes, however, set it apart from the more precise linearity of the drawing. Sickert executed six other related paintings, one in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, five now untraced (Baron 1973, pp. 308-9; Baron 2006, p. 203, under cat. 85, one untraced painting repr.) and six other drawings of the same street (Private Collection; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; and Collection of Major W.H. Stephenson, Stephenson 1940, p. 66, repr; British Museum, London, inv. 1981,0328.5; now untraced; see Baron 1973, pp. 308-9, under cat. 66, and Baron 2006, p. 203, under cat. 85). All of the known related paintings date between the later 1880s to ca. 1906; although the drawings are probably roughly contemporary, dating Sickert's landscape sketches is difficult because he continued to produce studies similar in style throughout his career (Baron 1973, pp. 308-9; Baron 2006, p. 203, under cat. 85). Sean Leatherbury, 2009.
Works cited: Baron, Wendy, Sickert (London, 1973); Baron, Wendy, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings (New Haven & London, 2006); Baron, Wendy and Shone, Richard, Sickert Paintings (New Haven & London, 1992-3); Browse, Lillian (ed.), Sickert (London, 1960); Corbett, David Peters, Sickert (London, 2001); Shone, Richard, Walter Sickert (Oxford, 1988); Sickert. Paintings and Drawings (London: The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1960); Stephenson, William Henry, Sickert: the man, and his art: Random Reminiscences (Southport, 1940).