The Camden Town Group in Context

Probably given by the artist to Albert Rutherston (1881–1953), by whom presented to Tate Gallery 1951.

Ballet Scene is executed with graphite and watercolour on cream wove paper which is medium weight and of good quality. All the edges are cut and there is a fold mark which runs horizontally across the sheet 36 mm from the bottom edge. It is not known when or why the paper was folded. Gore used both sketchbooks and loose sheets of paper and this support is more likely to be the latter. The sketch covers the full dimension of the paper. Drawing has been briskly applied with a sharp, soft pencil then painted over with watercolour washes, thinly applied in all but the darker areas at the top. The palette is limited to dark blue, brown, red and yellow, with dark blue used extensively in the background shadows. White has been mixed, in small amounts, with the red in the dresses to impart body. Colour is used to reinforce the sense of perspective and the dramatic character of the scene.

Gore seems to have been very interested in the properties of his materials and had clear ideas about how different media should best be used. Watercolour could enhance the drawing and help to ‘explain’ the subject but ‘should’ be used within certain technical parameters: ‘watercolour is a transparent stain and directly the transparency is lost the raison d’etre of the medium is lost. A man who can create anything in any medium is the man who realizes its possibilities and limits.’1

The ballet particularly fascinated Gore and it formed a regular subject in his art. The critic Frank Rutter, one of his friends, recalled that these pictures were:

Rutter was writing about when Gore saw Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company, which performed in England for the first time in 1911. But Gore’s drawing Ballet Scene evidently does not show the Ballets Russes and, although difficult to date with absolute certainty, its style and composition suggest a period much earlier than 1911. The artist’s son Frederick Gore believes that the drawing must have been made early on in his father’s career, and stresses that his father’s interest in ballet did not derive from Sickert, but took hold long before they met.2 On stylistic grounds a date of c.1903–6 is suggested here.

The drawing appears to be a complete and finished work in itself, rather than a study for a painting. Gore favoured two theatres in particular, both in Leicester Square: the Alhambra Theatre of Varieties and the Empire Theatre. But it has not been possible to identify the ballet being performed in the watercolour based on the amount of visual information that is present nor the location of the performance. The two figures on the left in the foreground are in historical costume.