The Camden Town Group in Context

Leicester Galleries, London; purchased by Roland, Browse and Delbanco, London, c.1945, from whom purchased by Tate Gallery 1945.

This drawing is executed in black and white chalk on a coarse, grey-brown, lightweight, machine-made paper, which is extremely fragile. The left edge is torn and the remainder are cut straight, suggesting that the sheet was taken from a sketchbook. The paper has discoloured over time and now has a greenish caste around the edges. The composition of the image suggests that Sickert begun his drawing from the centre of the image focusing on detail and working outwards from these fixed points. In later years he advised his students, ‘Drawing is from the particular to the general; painting is from the general to the particular’.1

The drawing is freely executed in black chalk with white highlights, which now appear slightly brighter owing to the discolouration of the paper. In spite of the friable nature of the chalk, the artist does not appear to have applied a fixative, reflecting the temporary nature of this sketch.

This drawing is a preliminary study for the painting, The Little Tea Party: Nina Hamnett and Roald Kristian 1915–16 (Tate N05288, fig.1). The focus is the seated pose of Edgar de Bergen, also known as Roald Kristian, recording the position of his arms and legs and the shadows made by the folds in his clothes. His face is sketched in a very cursory fashion, as is the headless figure of Nina Hamnett seated beside him on the chaise-longue. To the right there is the suggestion of a side table with a cup or mug on it. The background has been left completely blank.

Another sketch, The Little Tea Party c.1915–16 (Huddersfield Art Gallery),1 in pencil, pen and ink, is a fuller description of the compositional elements of the picture and the individual sitters. In that drawing, Sickert has overlaid an initial blue pencil layout with finer detail in pen and ink. The appearance of the sofa and the vertical stripes of the wallpaper are recorded, but the still-life objects on the table on the right are not described.

Other known studies related to the painting include a watercolour (private collection),2 and a pencil drawing on buff paper of Edgar de Bergen (private collection).3 The latter is inscribed ‘De Bergen’ and is a detailed transcription of the appearance of the sitter, particularly his face and arms. In the drawing, de Bergen looks directly at the artist or viewer whereas in the final painting he stares away into space, suggesting the same sense of isolation present in Ennui c.1914 (Tate N03846). There is no known corresponding sketch of Hamnett, perhaps because Sickert was more familiar with her and had sketched her on previous occasions.4 There is also a watercolour study (private collection)5 of a couple seated side by side on a couch that has a similar compositional format.

Unlike the series of drawings related to Ennui (Tate T00350), there is almost no discernible alteration in the poses of the sitters between the various related sketches. This suggests that they were all completed fairly quickly from one sitting. Tate’s drawing is possibly the first in the series since the figurative arrangement is the least successful. For example, the position of de Bergen’s head is not in correct alignment with the rest of his body and his left leg is too long. Hamnett’s figure is incomplete. From this attempt to capture the original basis of the idea, Sickert perhaps completed the other sketches that more carefully record the visual facts of the scene. In the Huddersfield drawing, de Bergen, evidently drawn from life while seated on the chaise-longue, was probably sketched first. The figure of his wife, however, has been added later to the other end of the sofa, overlaid on top of the existing sketch in pencil with the lines reinforced heavily in black ink. She has possibly been copied from another drawing. It is likely, therefore, that the Tate’s painting does not record an actual scene but is a compilation of two different occasions. This perhaps explains Hamnett’s recollection in her 1932 autobiography that she posed on an iron bedstead (see Tate N05288).6

Sickert’s usual practice was to work from a squared-up drawing and there is no evidence of this process on any of the extant works on paper. However, it was also his custom, at times, to cut up his drawings along the lines in order to transfer each square methodically, and, therefore, it may be supposed that some drawings were destroyed and lost.