Footnotes

Provenance
Jacques-Emile Blanche
George Mevil-Blanche
Sale; Sotheby's, London, 17 March 1976, lot 28
Sale; Bonhams, London, 25 March 2003, lot 25
With Messums, London, 2004, where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
Paris, Bernheim, Walter Sickert, 1-10 June 1904, cat.no.52
Dieppe, Musee de Dieppe, Walter Sickert. Jacques-Emile Blanche, 16 July-20 September 1954, cat.no.9
London, James Hyman Gallery, From Life: Radical Figurative Art from Sickert to Bevan, 10 September-18 October 2003, cat.no.3

Literature
Wendy Baron, Sickert, Paintings and Drawings, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2006, p.236, cat.no.125.4 (col.ill.)

Walter Sickert's personal attachment to the city of Dieppe may partly be regarded as a family matter: his mother Eleanor was sent to school in the French town of Dieppe on the coast of Normandy. Sickert's first visit to Dieppe appears to date back to August 1879, when, aged 19, his family rented a holiday house. It was the theatre that enthralled Sickert – a passion that remained with him and would result in a major artistic output on the subject (also see lot 51). Painting and drawing at this point were still pastime occupations. Sickert returned to Dieppe in 1885, following an earlier visit with his new wife Ellen Melicent Cobden to Scheveningen in the Netherlands and to Munich, his native town.

In the years following, Sickert's increasingly overriding interest in painting led him to execute several fine views of the city and its coastal surroundings. It was in Dieppe that summer that Sickert met up with previous acquaintances, such as Jacques-Emile Blanche – the first owner of this work – and Edgar Degas, whom he had met in Paris a year and a half earlier. From then until the 1920s, Sickert was to visit Dieppe regularly, often during the summer months. In the Spring season of 1902, Sickert received a commission from the owner of the Hôtel de la Plage to depict the principal sites and views of Dieppe. The result produced several large, sweeping views of the town, including a major work of Le Place Nationale with it's central statue, Le Grand Duquesne, Dieppe (circa 1899-1900, Manchester City Art Galleries), of which the present work is an alternative view. Sickert employed looser brushwork in the present view, opting for a more vibrant, impressionistic and dynamic atmosphere.

The statue of Le Grand Duquesne erected in the centre of the Place represents the great Admiral Abraham Duquesne. A Huguenot native to Dieppe, Duquesne was celebrated for having defeated a Dutch fleet off the coast of Selly in 1676, at the height of the conflict launched by Louis XIV against the Dutch provinces. The sculpture is the work of Antoine Laurent Dantan, called Dantan P'Amé and was unveiled on 22 September 1844 to commemorate the life and exploits of one of the city's most celebrated heroes.