WALTER RICHARD SICKERT (BRITISH 1860-1942)SPECTATORS AT THE OLD BEDFORD MUSIC HALLCrayon and chalkIndistinctly inscribed (lower right)44.5 x 34.5cm (17½ x 13½ in.)Provenance:Gifted by the artist to Dame Edith Sitwell DBE (1887-1964), at 2 Carlyle Square, LondonThence by descent at Weston Hall.Literature:Osbert Sitwell, 'A Short Character of Sickert', introduction to 'A Free House! The Writings of Walter Richard Sickert', ref. p. xiii-xiv, ill. facing p. xviWendy Baron, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings, New Haven & London, 2006, p.180, cat. no. 49.2 Catalogue Note: Osbert Sitwell refers directly to this picture in his memoires : I was still at Eton and had just arrived at Renishaw for the summer holidays and my sister - then my only link with the living arts - returned, about the same time from her first grown-up visit to London, bringing with her a drawing, upon tawny-coloured paper, of the heads, crowned with the large hats of the period, of four or five women sitting in the back seats of a music-hall. It is, indeed, a memorable drawing in its simplicity, in the way the faces are placed on the paper, and in the brooding intensity and expectation that characterise their look. Greatly impressed, I asked who was the author of this work so new to me, and where she had acquired it, and she answered with great pride that it had been given to her by a great artist called Sickert. Osbert Sitwell, op. cit. p. xiii.We are grateful to Dr. Wendy Baron for her kind assistance in cataloguing this work. Medium Crayon and chalk