Footnotes

Provenance
Walter Taylor
Probably Dr Robert Emmons
With Arthur Tooth & Sons, London
Lord Cottesloe
Sale; Sotheby's, London, 14 July, 1965, lot 69, where purchased by
M. Knoedler & Co., New York
Sale; Sotheby's, London, 15 December 1971, lot 21, where purchased by
P. Solomon
Sale; Christie's, London, 13 June 1980, lot 50 (as Degas at New Orleans)
Sale; Sotheby's, London, 2 May 1990, lot 48 (as Degas at New Orleans)
Private Collection, U.S.A.
With Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
Sale; Swann Auction Galleries, New York, 8 March 2016, lot 43, where purchased by the present owners
Private Collection, U.S.A.

Exhibited
London, Carfax Gallery, Paintings and Drawings, 1914, cat.no.8
Probably London, Thomas Agnew & Sons, Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by W.R. Sickert from the Collection of Robert Emmons, May-June 1947, cat.no.16
New Orleans, Museum of Art, Degas and New Orleans: A French Impressionist in America, 1 May-29 August 1999; this exhibition travelled to Copenhagen, Ordrupgaard, 16 September-28 November 1999

Literature
Wendy Baron, Sickert, Phaidon, London, 1973, p.367, cat.no.354
Wendy Baron, Sickert Paintings and Drawings, New Haven and London, 2006, p.409, cat.no.419 (ill.b&w)

The present drawing depicts the interior of Sickert's Granby Street studio which he used between 1908 and 1914.

In a letter to Anna Hope (Nan) Hudson in February 1914 Sickert wrote: 'The daylight is coming back to London which shifts my centre of activity ... to my theatre in Granby Street...' The term 'theatre' is revealing. To Sickert each of the many rooms he rented as studios in houses in and around Camden Town was a stage. He rearranged the furniture – iron bedsteads, bedside cabinets, mantelshelf ornaments, chests of drawers, a sagging chaise-longue, washstands, even a grand piano - to create individual stage sets. It took little to spark off his imagination. In this case, it seems to have been the black model who between 1912 and 1914 features in the work of several painters besides Sickert, including Glyn Philpot and Malcolm Drummond. Black models were uncommon at this period. Sickert immediately thought of a place where black people were not rare, the Deep South of the United States, which in turn led him to remember his mentor, Edgar Degas, whose mother was Creole from New Orleans. Hence the allusive title: in his mind's eye, Sickert visualised his own Camden Town studio as the Degas family home.

The same corner, alternatively staged, and the male model standing by the fireplace, 'Hubby', both feature in Sickert's Ennui (Tate, London).

We are grateful to Dr. Wendy Baron for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.