When the war broke out in August 1914 the artist and his wife left Envermeu to go and live in Dieppe. Sickert then wrote to Miss Sands, 'I am enjoying immensely the enforced study again of countless subjects here I have always loved. I do very elaborate pen drawings then small pochade panels'. 'La Rue Aguado' is just such a subject-an old favourite from the 1890's-and the painted and drawn studies for it illustrate the precise procedure outlined to Miss Sands. In a further letter to Miss Sands the artist wrote: 'At Dieppe the other day...I sat down on the plage my eye having been caught by the stars and stripes flying with the Union Jack and the tricolor in front of the (new) Hotel Royal. On the left in such sparkling sunlight that it was grey and black a back row of cut bushes then forward sprays of tamarisk, then a border of grey-blue flowers and then in front geraniums. I literally as Whistler used to say "rattled it off". Something has given me back my youth and my talent. And the flower beds were bounded by a wire... and at intervals benches without backs painted hedge-sparrow-egg-green, on the right the row of houses the Hotel Royal the flags and the tobacco factory with its two chimneys' (see W. Baron, op.cit.,)
A larger version of this work was exhibited at Agnews, 1960, no.109 as 'La Rue Aguado Envermeu', a pencil study of the same subject is illustrated in L. Browse, Sickert, Plymouth 1960, no. 17.