The Camden Town Group in Context

ISBN 978-1-84976-385-1

Walter Richard Sickert Café Suisse, Dieppe 1914

Walter Richard Sickert 'Café Suisse, Dieppe' 1914
Walter Richard Sickert 1860–1942
Café Suisse, Dieppe 1914
Watercolour, charcoal and ink on paper
394 x 259 mm
Tate Archive TGA 8120/3/29
Presented by Mrs Andrina Tritton in 1981, from the estate of her mother, Mrs Andrina Schweder, the sister of Walter Sickert's second wife Christine Drummond Angus (c.1877-1920)
© Estate of Walter R. Sickert / DACS
Walter Sickert wrote to Ethel Sands in 1914 that he had arrived in Dieppe and ‘Of course I have brought a note-book & done some studies already for the café-arcade picture. I think I will do some small oil panels’ (TGA 9125/5, no.150). The letters running up the two left-hand columns read ‘CAFE SUISSE’ and the letters at the top of the column to the right read ‘TELEPHONE’. A sign in the background to the right reads ‘CAFE BAR’ (see TGA 8120/3/1).
The study is squared-up and numbered and the back is chalk rubbed for transfer to canvas, most likely for the similar painting of the Café Suisse with the waiter standing in the archway that is in Leeds City Art Gallery. The painting, however, does not include the flags that are on the top left of the drawing or the architectural ornamentation. Related drawings held in Tate Archive are the following: TGA 8120/3/1, TGA 8120/3/11, TGA 8120/3/12, TGA 8120/3/14, TGA 8120/3/15, 8120/3/16 and TGA 8120/3/30. The drawing is referenced in Wendy Baron, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings, New Haven and London 2006, no.440.10.

Helena Bonett
September 2010

How to cite

Walter Richard Sickert, Café Suisse, Dieppe, 1914, 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-cafe-suisse-dieppe-r1104627, accessed 29 March 2024.