Lettered: within image "St. 1922." (at lower left corner) and "Rue Aguado -" (lower right corner), beneath image "Sickert inv del et sc." (lower left, immediately beneath image) and "L'ARMOIRE A GLACE" (centre). Signed in pencil below the platemark (lower right corner).
Inscribed in pencil Mon rêve ça a toujours été d’avoiur une
armoire à glace! (My dream has always been to have a mirrored wardrobe). Bromberg records other impressions in the first state that bear an identical inscription (Bromberg p. 251).
Literature: Bromberg 200, III/III.
Provenance: The Fine Art Society, London, 2008.
An open door leads us toward an intimate space where a woman is sitting next to a mirrored wardrobe, the armoire à glace of the title, that reflects part of the bed in the room. The model is Sickert’s loyal maid, the French Marie Pepin. With an inscription on the bottom right of the sheet, the artist himself reveals that the scene was depicted in Rue Aguado, in the Dieppe flat alongside the Normandy seashore, where he lived as a lessee between 1920-1922. Such subject can be considered the French counterpart of the Londoners’ working-class domestic interiors represented by the Sickert during his Camden Town period.
After this etching and several preparatory
drawings, in 1924 Sickert painted a finished oil on canvas of the same name
(London, Tate Collections, inv. N05313), which features only a few differences compared to our print.
£ 2,400.-