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Lot Essay
Steer concentrated on pure landscape painting after 1900, but in the 1890s he was regarded primarily as a portrait and figure painter. James Laver (Portraits in Oil and Vinegar, London, 1925, p.19) remarked that, after William Etty, Steer was 'the greatest flesh painter in modern times'.
The present work is the first of a small group from the spring and summer of 1894 which depict the artist's favourite model, Rose Pettigrew wearing a white petticoat. Rose was a young girl of around 12 years old when she first met Steer in 1888. She was the youngest of the Pettigrew sisters, all of whom were artist's models, who had been brought to London by their mother in 1884 to pose for Millais' An Idyll of 1745 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight). They continued to pose for the most illustrious artists of the day, including Whistler, Leighton, Sargent and Sickert. Rose first appeared in a major work by Steer in The Sofa which was shown at the N.E.A.C. in April 1889. By around 1892, the artist and his model had fallen in love, and by 1894 they were secretly engaged, only to break off relations in around 1895 or 1896, when the last two portraits of Rose were painted.
The 1894 series of portraits of Rose are stylistically linked to Degas's informal studies of dancers resting, such as a dancer reading a newspaper in front of a stove, or a single dancer standing holding a fan, with vast floor space behind her. The Degas model, realistic and unglamorized, is reflected in the pose Rose adopts here, purposely
adjusting her shoe with her hair falling over her slightly averted face. The snap-shot immediacy is created by the artist's truncated figure, and the couple's closer relationship is also implied in the relaxed and more intimate subject matter.
It was Steer's close friend Sickert and his association with Aubrey Beardsley and Henry Harland's Yellow Book since its inception in April 1894, that led to the reproduction of three works by Steer in the July issue: the present work, A Lady, and A Gentleman: Portrait of Sickert. Bruce Laughton (loc. cit.) comments on the Degas-inspired technique that Steer employed: 'The Sickert is thinly painted, virtually in black-and-white monochrome, over a red-toned ground. The same technique is used in the Self Portrait with Model, which is again the same size, 24 x 12 inches. The design of this picture is the most subtle of the three. The method of using a warm half-tone ground, into which the blacks are painted cool and the lights pulled out as creamy-pinks by using a semi-transparent white, can be found in Degas's Woman at a Window. Steer certainly knew and studied this painting, which was in Sickert's collection not earlier than the summer of 1892. But the exact dates of this group are not certain: all we can conclude is that before the summer of 1894 Steer had returned to a kind of basic tonal painting, eschewing the colouristic effects of Impressionism altogether. The flat-toned areas of the thinly painted Degas were not intended to produce modelling by chiaroscuro. Woman at a Window is more like a camera study of tonal relationships, when the whole interior of a room is darker than the bright patch of light at the window, and yet it is possible to infer mass and space by the varying degrees of reflected light in the shadows. The silhouetted profile of the woman's head is rendered quite objectively as an area of dark tone, becoming slightly more luminous under the chin. The anecdote of her personality is entirely subordinated to the rendering of light. In this sense Degas's painting can be called impressionist , although it is virtually in monochrome. I think Steer was attempting something of this kind when he painted Self Portrait with Model. The subject is really 'the painter at work with his model'. As in the Degas, the scene is a room full of reflected light coming from one bright patch at the window. Steer emphasises his detachment by looking at the scene in a mirror, so that his own incomplete figure appears in the background'.
The present work is the first of a small group from the spring and summer of 1894 which depict the artist's favourite model, Rose Pettigrew wearing a white petticoat. Rose was a young girl of around 12 years old when she first met Steer in 1888. She was the youngest of the Pettigrew sisters, all of whom were artist's models, who had been brought to London by their mother in 1884 to pose for Millais' An Idyll of 1745 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight). They continued to pose for the most illustrious artists of the day, including Whistler, Leighton, Sargent and Sickert. Rose first appeared in a major work by Steer in The Sofa which was shown at the N.E.A.C. in April 1889. By around 1892, the artist and his model had fallen in love, and by 1894 they were secretly engaged, only to break off relations in around 1895 or 1896, when the last two portraits of Rose were painted.
The 1894 series of portraits of Rose are stylistically linked to Degas's informal studies of dancers resting, such as a dancer reading a newspaper in front of a stove, or a single dancer standing holding a fan, with vast floor space behind her. The Degas model, realistic and unglamorized, is reflected in the pose Rose adopts here, purposely
adjusting her shoe with her hair falling over her slightly averted face. The snap-shot immediacy is created by the artist's truncated figure, and the couple's closer relationship is also implied in the relaxed and more intimate subject matter.
It was Steer's close friend Sickert and his association with Aubrey Beardsley and Henry Harland's Yellow Book since its inception in April 1894, that led to the reproduction of three works by Steer in the July issue: the present work, A Lady, and A Gentleman: Portrait of Sickert. Bruce Laughton (loc. cit.) comments on the Degas-inspired technique that Steer employed: 'The Sickert is thinly painted, virtually in black-and-white monochrome, over a red-toned ground. The same technique is used in the Self Portrait with Model, which is again the same size, 24 x 12 inches. The design of this picture is the most subtle of the three. The method of using a warm half-tone ground, into which the blacks are painted cool and the lights pulled out as creamy-pinks by using a semi-transparent white, can be found in Degas's Woman at a Window. Steer certainly knew and studied this painting, which was in Sickert's collection not earlier than the summer of 1892. But the exact dates of this group are not certain: all we can conclude is that before the summer of 1894 Steer had returned to a kind of basic tonal painting, eschewing the colouristic effects of Impressionism altogether. The flat-toned areas of the thinly painted Degas were not intended to produce modelling by chiaroscuro. Woman at a Window is more like a camera study of tonal relationships, when the whole interior of a room is darker than the bright patch of light at the window, and yet it is possible to infer mass and space by the varying degrees of reflected light in the shadows. The silhouetted profile of the woman's head is rendered quite objectively as an area of dark tone, becoming slightly more luminous under the chin. The anecdote of her personality is entirely subordinated to the rendering of light. In this sense Degas's painting can be called impressionist , although it is virtually in monochrome. I think Steer was attempting something of this kind when he painted Self Portrait with Model. The subject is really 'the painter at work with his model'. As in the Degas, the scene is a room full of reflected light coming from one bright patch at the window. Steer emphasises his detachment by looking at the scene in a mirror, so that his own incomplete figure appears in the background'.