After the Great War, Sickert and his wife Christine moved to Dieppe. They lived there together until Christine died of tuberculosis in October 1920, with Sickert remaining in France until 1922. This period was described by Sickert’s first biographer Robert Emmons in 1941.

The war once ended, like a pair of homing pigeons, they flew back to Dieppe. […] The summer of 1919 was spent at the Villa d’Aumale, but for some reason this was later disposed of, and another house at Envermeu, the Maison Mouton, bought and renovated. […] They stayed on in the Villa d’Aumale for the winer of ’19-’20, a very severe one, Sickert painting hard and going about the countryside in all weathers with the notaire, who was also the local auctioneer; but Christina became ill, and they returned to London at the New Year. In the spring she had recovered enough to remove, with all the Camden Road furniture, to their new home. But all the summer she weakened: and in October she died. The shock to Sickert was terrific.

After Christine’s death, Sickert moved to an apartment in Dieppe and in the winter of 1920 treated two main subjects: a local cabaret-restaurant called Vernet’s, and baccarat tables at the local casino (fig. 1). Dieppe was one of the great pleasure resorts, akin to Deauville and Trouville further down the coast, being frequented by visitors from England and Paris alike. The casino was a lively and cultured place to be at that time. Among other things, a piece for solo flute by Camille Saint-Saens was premiered there in August 1921 and regular visitors included Winston Churchill’s mother-in-law Lady Blanche Hozier (1852–1925), a friend of Sickert’s. This drawing was probably made on the spot from life, on one of the artist’s late night visits to the baccarat tables; the rooms opened at midnight and he stayed until the early hours, watching as peculiar combinations of glamorous leisure and downbeat addiction played out before him.

This sketch is annotated with colour notes which indicates its purpose as a preparatory drawing. The back of the chair is marked ‘R’ for ‘red’ and one of the ladies’ sleeves is marked ‘bk’ for ‘black’. Using this drawing and others like it, Sickert composed a number of sophisticated genre paintings, notable for their intense colour (fed by electric lighting) and their bourgeois drama. Wendy Baron has catalogued twelve oil paintings of the Dieppe baccarat tables from 1920. This drawing relates to a painting of baccarat dated 1920 (fig. 1).

The extravagant casino itself (fig. 2), a pastiche of old French chateau architecture with an orientalist twist, was later destroyed by bomb damage in the Second World War.