The Camden Town Group in Context

Presented by Lord Howard de Walden to the Contemporary Art Society 1928; presented to Tate Gallery 1939.

Les Arcades de la Poissonnerie, Dieppe is painted on a pre-primed fine linen canvas attached to a five-member strainer that was probably purchased from a Dieppe colourman (see Tate N05313). The number twelve has been stamped onto the back of the canvas, indicating that the canvas was a standard commercial size (see Tate N03182). A grey-green layer has been applied onto the white ground, probably by the artist, to act as an optical ground. The main compositional lines were drawn in black paint directly onto this layer and subdued tones were then brushed over the lines to build up the tonal composition and break up linear form. The paint appears to be of a tube consistency and is applied relatively thickly, forming isolated drying cracks in the browns and olives where there is a greater build-up of paint and/or a higher concentration of medium. Strong brushwork that does not correspond with the final image is visible at the surface indicating that the artist made various modifications during painting, and some less important areas of the work remain unresolved, the bottom right-hand corner, for example. However, the painting is varnished and signed by the artist suggesting that he considered the work finished.

The subject of this painting is part of the Quai Duquesne, a boulevard in Dieppe which runs along the side of the Bassin Duquesne on the western edge of the harbour. Sickert’s view shows the street from an oblique angle so that the picture plane is dominated by the dark imposing line of arcaded frontages until it is relieved by the light and colour of the sunset sky in the top right-hand corner. The building in the centre of the composition is one which stood near the old Customs House, in between the Rue Notre Dame (the first street opening on the left) and the Rue Saint-Jean (second left). Owing to its proximity to the fish market at the end of the quay it was known as the Arcades de la Poissonnerie. A near contemporary photograph shows that during the early twentieth century it comprised a series of small shops, cafés and hotels,1 while Sickert’s etching, Dieppe, La Rue Notre Dame 1909,2 reveals that the first arch nearest to the viewer housed the ‘Café Marine’.

Sickert had a long-standing connection with Dieppe dating back to childhood holidays with his family. For over thirty years he spent nearly every summer there, and between 1898 and 1905 he also made it his permanent home. Along with Venice and London, it was the place which provided the greatest and most consistent source of inspiration for his art. He roamed freely around Dieppe painting landscapes which provide an extensive visual record of the key sights and landmarks, streets and markets, harbour and quays, the seafront and the fishermen’s quarter of Le Pollet (see, for example, Tate N03182). As was his wont, certain subjects came to exercise a particular fascination for him and he revisited them repeatedly, making numerous variations upon a chosen motif, such as the statue of Admiral Duquesne in the Place Nationale (see Tate N05096), or the Gothic façade of the church of St Jacques (see Tate N05094). Les Arcades de la Poissonnerie is just one of a large number of paintings and sketches dating from his seven-year residency which documents the Quai Duquesne,3 while a popular related theme was the view looking down the Rue Notre Dame towards the cupola and tower of St Jacques, which featured the same two buildings on the immediate left and centre of this painting.4 A personal reason for his focus on this part of town may have been that the Arcades de la Poissonnerie was also the address of his Dieppoise mistress, Augustine (Titine) Villain, a local woman who ran a stall in the fish market.5

It was Sickert’s accumulated repertory of views which led the French painter, Jacques-Emile Blanche (see Tate N04912), to describe Sickert as ‘the Canaletto’ of Dieppe, adding ‘No other artist has so perfectly felt and expressed the character of the town’.6 His topographical approach was simultaneously that of an outsider and a local inhabitant. On the one hand he focused on picturesque tourist attractions such as the traditional architecture, the cafés, the hotels and the casino. On the other, however, his treatment of the subject matter created an unglamorous, everyday familiarity which suited the waning heyday of the once fashionable Anglo–French resort. Despite being a depiction of one of the liveliest parts of town, Les Arcades de la Poissonnerie has a melancholy atmosphere effected by the claustrophobic pictorial space, black lines, sombre palette and grey ground. The steep receding viewpoint is similar to that used in other townscapes such as South Façade of St Jacques: The Rag Fair c.1898 (private collection),7 and Rowlandson House – Sunset 1910–11 (Tate N05088), and the artist seems to have been absorbed by the structural rhythm and geometric forms of the buildings, and the interplay between the light stone façade and the dark spaces of the arcades. In common with other Dieppe subjects from the time, the painting demonstrates Sickert’s technical progress towards a freer and more fluid application of paint and the prominent use of sketchy dark structural outlines as an integral part of his practice.

Tate’s painting is virtually identical to another contemporaneous version of the subject, Les Arcades de la Poissonnerie c.1900 (Pallant House Gallery, Chichester),8 and there is also a related drawing of the same view.9 Furthermore, Sickert used the composition as the basis for a new treatment of the subject many years later, probably during the mid-1920s.10 This rendering of Arcades de la Poissonnerie employs heavy outlines with a bleached, bichromatic palette and is one of a number of Dieppe subjects revisited by the artist at this time.