Walter Sickert
Cheerio, 1928/29
Etching on laid paper
Plate: 18.1 x 14.1 cm / 7 1/8 x 5 1/2 in
Sheet: 26.1 x 22.1 cm / 10 1/4 x 8 3/4 in
Sheet: 26.1 x 22.1 cm / 10 1/4 x 8 3/4 in
Only state; Edition 48 of 75
Copyright The Artist
Further images
The title of ‘Cheerio’, a colloquialism for ‘goodbye’, refers to the farewell number performed by the Tiller Girls dance troupe at The Plaza Theatre. In the early days of cinema,...
The title of ‘Cheerio’, a colloquialism for ‘goodbye’, refers to the farewell number performed by the Tiller Girls dance troupe at The Plaza Theatre. In the early days of cinema, film screenings were frequently accompanied by live entertainment such as dancing or music. With an unfailing appetite for popular theatrical entertainments of the day, Sickert was an early attendee of The Plaza which opened in 1926 just below Piccadilly Circus at the eastern end of Jermyn Street. Cheerio emerged in concert with two oil paintings and at least two drawings, one of which restyled the title in French as ‘La Retraite’ [Baron 2006, no. 742]. As with That Old-Fashioned Mother of Mine, Cheerio was published in a limited and numbered edition. This practice was likely instigated by the Leicester Galleries, which published both works. Sickert’s earlier preference had been, as Emmons paraphrased, ‘that the edition of a print should be unlimited, or limited only by the demand, the price low, and all incentive to speculation avoided.’
Provenance
Ruth and Joseph BrombergThe Fine Art Society, London, 2004
The Herbert and Ann Lucas Collection, Los Angeles, June 2004
Exhibitions
London, The Leicester Galleries, Etchings and Engravings by Walter Richard Sickert, Oct. 1941, cat. no. 60New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, Walter Sickert as Printmaker, 21 Feb. – 15 April 1979, cat. no. 116
London, The Fine Art Society, The Ruth and Joseph Bromberg Collection of Sickert Prints and Drawings, 21 Sept. – 21 Oct. 2004, cat. no. 167*
London, Piano Nobile, Sickert: Love, Death & Ennui. The Herbert and Ann Lucas Collection, 26 Sept. – 19 Dec. 2025, no. 84*
Literature
Aimée Troyen, Walter Sickert as Printmaker, exh. cat., Yale Center for British Art, 1979, cat. no. 116, pp. 88–89 (illus.)
Ruth Bromberg, Walter Sickert: Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné, Yale University Press, 2000, cat. no. 222, pp. 283–284 (illus.)The Ruth and Joseph Bromberg Collection of Sickert Prints and Drawings, exh. cat., The Fine Art Society, 2004, cat. no. 167, pp. 136–137 (this impression col. illus.)*
Wendy Baron, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings, Yale University Press, 2006, cat. no. 742.4, p. 544
Kate Aspinall, Luke Farey and Stuart Lucas, Sickert: Love, Death & Ennui. The Herbert and Ann Lucas Collection, exh. cat., Piano Nobile, 2025, no. 84, pp. 146–147 (col. illus.)*