Footnotes

Provenance
With Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
Arthur Clifton (of the Carfax Gallery, London) and by descent to
Mrs. Madeline Clifton (née Knox)
With Agnew's Gallery, London
Sale; Christie's, London, 19 October 1979, lot 24
Private Collection, Paris
With Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 30 April 1985, where acquired by
Lord Jeffrey Archer
His sale; Christie's, South Kensington, 21 June 2011, lot 77, where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
London, Agnew's Gallery, Sickert; Centenary Exhibition of Pictures from Private Collections, March-April 1960, cat.no.37 (as Place St Jacques, Dieppe)

Literature
Wendy Baron, Sickert, Phaidon, London, 1973, p.329, no.151.1
Wendy Baron, Sickert, Paintings and Drawings, Yale University Press, London & New Haven, 2006, p.257-58, cat.no.154.1

Dieppe was Sickert's second home. He visited and painted in Dieppe nearly every summer from 1883 until autumn 1898 when he left London to live in Dieppe permanently. He did not return to live in London until 1905. Interrupted only by several long visits to Venice, Sickert spent his time in Dieppe painting its architecture, its churches and its harbour. As the French painter Jacques-Emile Blanche acknowledged: 'No other artist has so perfectly felt and expressed the character of the town, whose Canaletto he has become'.

Sickert drew and painted the subject of the present work many times. Informally called Place de l'Église, it shows rue de la Boucherie behind an open space closed on the left by the south flank of St Jacques, the major church of Dieppe. The main market was – and still is – set up in the Place Nationale, just behind the rue de la Boucherie, but a few fishwives, flower sellers and other traders sold their produce in the space painted here by Sickert. Seven paintings are catalogued by Baron, one of which (York Art Gallery) is dated 1903. All but the present work feature young trees dotted around the open space. This indicates that the present work was painted before the planting, probably around 1902.

We are grateful to Dr. Wendy Baron for compiling this catalogue entry.