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Lot Essay
The present composition is discussed by Richard Shone in the 1992 exhibition catalogue, 'Sickert's final residence in Dieppe lasted from Spring 1919 to mid-summer 1922. Baccarat [and cat. 96-100 of the 1992 exhibition: Vernet's, Dieppe, O Nuit d'Amour, Au Caboulot au bout du Quai, Portrait of Victor Lecourt and La Parisienne: Lola in a Grey Cloak] were all conceived in Dieppe, although some of the paintings were finished after his return to London. Until the death of his wife Christine in October 1920, Sickert was highly productive and unusually diverse in his choice of subjects, even making a series of still-life paintings, a genre rare in his work. In 1920 his energies appear to have been concentrated on interior scenes studied in the Café Vernet and the Casino, and on the landscapes in the vicinity of his house, the Maison Mouton at Envermeu.
Baccarat belongs to a group of works showing the gaming tables of the brand new Casino in Dieppe situated by the shore at the end of the rue Aguado. This 'huge, concrete fortress' as Jacques-Emile Blanche described it, had replaced a 'moorish style' building of 1886 which Sickert had painted in 1904 and 1907 [see W. Baron, op. cit., nos. 153, 292]. With its gardens, restaurant and gaming-rooms, the Casino was a focus of fashionable life during the summer. At first, Sickert quite openly made studies of the gamblers as they grouped around the green baize tables under electric lights with fringed shades. Later, after a complaint from Lady Blanche Hozier (mother of Mrs Winston Churchill and well known to Sickert since the 1890s) that players might be recognised from his paintings, Sickert was forced to draw on small cards held discreetly below the table top. Nine of these cards, each 14 x 9 cm., are in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and a larger working drawing with colour notes, 27.7 x 21 cm., is recorded in Baron (op. cit., no. 398). Oliver Brown, later Sickert's dealer at the Leicester Galleries, remembered encountering Sickert, wearing full evening dress, in the Casino in about 1920. He was 'drawing on small scraps of paper' and 'gaily remarked: "I am the only one who will make any money in this room"' (see O. Brown, Exhibition: The Memoirs of Oliver Brown, London, 1968, p. 134).
Baccarat and its related paintings represent Sickert's only foray into the beau monde. Socially and personally he knew the world well but but had never before made it the subject of his work. The contemporaneity of the Casino paintings, with their amused portrayal of the rich (and perhaps not so rich) at play - some alert, some diffident, bright young things with bare shoulders, avid frumps in hats - is perfectly matched by Sickert's range of brilliant colours, its sharp artificiality accentuated by electric light. In these groups of figures Sickert may consciously be echoing the dice- and card-playing scenes of early seventeenth-century painting; he may have known for example, the copy in the Dieppe Chambre de Commerce of Valentin's Card Players. At the same time his choice of subject and colour-scheme provide points of contact with contemporaries such as Vuillard and Dufy' (see R. Shone, Exhibition catalogue, Sickert Paintings, London, Royal Academy, 1992, p. 268).
Baccarat belongs to a group of works showing the gaming tables of the brand new Casino in Dieppe situated by the shore at the end of the rue Aguado. This 'huge, concrete fortress' as Jacques-Emile Blanche described it, had replaced a 'moorish style' building of 1886 which Sickert had painted in 1904 and 1907 [see W. Baron, op. cit., nos. 153, 292]. With its gardens, restaurant and gaming-rooms, the Casino was a focus of fashionable life during the summer. At first, Sickert quite openly made studies of the gamblers as they grouped around the green baize tables under electric lights with fringed shades. Later, after a complaint from Lady Blanche Hozier (mother of Mrs Winston Churchill and well known to Sickert since the 1890s) that players might be recognised from his paintings, Sickert was forced to draw on small cards held discreetly below the table top. Nine of these cards, each 14 x 9 cm., are in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and a larger working drawing with colour notes, 27.7 x 21 cm., is recorded in Baron (op. cit., no. 398). Oliver Brown, later Sickert's dealer at the Leicester Galleries, remembered encountering Sickert, wearing full evening dress, in the Casino in about 1920. He was 'drawing on small scraps of paper' and 'gaily remarked: "I am the only one who will make any money in this room"' (see O. Brown, Exhibition: The Memoirs of Oliver Brown, London, 1968, p. 134).
Baccarat and its related paintings represent Sickert's only foray into the beau monde. Socially and personally he knew the world well but but had never before made it the subject of his work. The contemporaneity of the Casino paintings, with their amused portrayal of the rich (and perhaps not so rich) at play - some alert, some diffident, bright young things with bare shoulders, avid frumps in hats - is perfectly matched by Sickert's range of brilliant colours, its sharp artificiality accentuated by electric light. In these groups of figures Sickert may consciously be echoing the dice- and card-playing scenes of early seventeenth-century painting; he may have known for example, the copy in the Dieppe Chambre de Commerce of Valentin's Card Players. At the same time his choice of subject and colour-scheme provide points of contact with contemporaries such as Vuillard and Dufy' (see R. Shone, Exhibition catalogue, Sickert Paintings, London, Royal Academy, 1992, p. 268).