The Camden Town Group in Context

ISBN 978-1-84976-385-1

Walter Richard Sickert A Man in Top Hat and Coat Tails on Stage, ?Vernet's, Dieppe ?c.1919–20

Walter Richard Sickert 'A Man in Top Hat and Coat Tails on Stage, ?Vernet's, Dieppe' ?c.1919-20
Walter Richard Sickert 1860–1942
A Man in Top Hat and Coat Tails on Stage, ?Vernet's, Dieppe ?c.1919–20
Graphite on paper
355 x 229 mm
Tate Archive TGA 8120/3/62
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
In this pencil study Walter Sickert depicts a man performing on stage dressed in top hat and tails with a cane in his right hand. Two spotlights shining on the figure cast a long shadow on the floor to the left and on to the curtain to the right. Previously this work has been catalogued as a drawing of Vernet’s, a cabaret café on the Quai Henri IV in Dieppe. However, other studies and paintings of Vernet’s suggest that the café did not have a balcony; the raised perspective of this drawing, therefore, would seemingly discount Vernet’s as the location.

Helena Bonett
June 2011

How to cite

Walter Richard Sickert, A Man in Top Hat and Coat Tails on Stage, ?Vernet's, Dieppe, ?c.1919-20, 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-a-man-in-top-hat-and-coat-tails-on-stage-vernets-dieppe-r1104720, accessed 03 December 2024.