SPENCER FREDERICK GORE (BRITISH 1878-1914)A GARDEN SQUARE IN CAMDEN TOWN Oil on canvas 51.5 x 62cm (20¼ x 24¼ in.)Executed in 1910Provenance:Acquired directly from the artist by John Quinn, New York, 1911.His sale, American Art Association, New York, 10th February 1927, lot 228, where acquired by S. LustgartenSale, Christie's, London, Modern British and Irish Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings and Sculpture, 23 November 1993, lot 57Sale, Christie's, London, 20th Century British Art, 5 March 1999, lot 26 Literature:Forbes Watson (intro.), The John Quinn Collection of Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings and Sculpture, New York, 1927, p.17.It is my privilege to have observed at close quarters the development of Spencer Frederick Gore, from what I may perhaps call the coming of age of his talent in 1906, to its close in 1914 ... In his painting was made manifest colour, and not merely colours ... He attained to exquisiteness in touch. Expression descended like snowflakes on his canvases, varied, adequate, and economical. He painted with the reticence and the measure of the great gentleman that he was. (W.R. Sickert, Paintings by the Late Spencer F. Gore, London, Carfax Gallery, February 1916.)Spencer Gore met Walter Sickert in 1904 while traveling in Normandy with fellow artist Albert Rutherston. Sickert was living in Dieppe at the time but moved back to London the following year and took a studio in Fitzroy Street not far from Gore. The two became great friends and an inspiration to each other. In 1909 they both took rooms in Mornington Crescent. Sickert resided at no. 6 and Gore rented a front room at no. 31 from a local vicar. It is believed that the present work depicts Mornington Crescent Gardens. The changing seasons and everyday activities within the gardens became a regular source for subject matter. People sitting, reading quietly, or playing tennis on the grass court, a game close to Gore's heart as his father had been the first Wimbledon Lawn Tennis champion in 1877.Writing in the New Age Magazine on 9 April 1914, after Gore's sudden death from catching pneumonia, Sickert reminisces that 'There was a few years ago a month of June which Gore verily seems to have used as if he had known that it was to be for him the last of its particularly fresh and sumptuous kind. He used it to look down on the garden of Mornington Crescent. The trained trees rise and droop in fringes, like fountains, over the little well of greenness and shade where parties of young people are playing at tennis. The backcloth is formed by the tops of the brown houses of the Hampstead Road, and the liver-coloured tiles of the Tube Station'. (W.R. Sickert, The New Age, 9th April 1914, The Perfect Modern, p.718)