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Walter Sickert
The Old Bedford (The Small Plate), 1910Etching on tan wove paperPlate: 11.1 x 8.5 cm / 4 3/8 x 3 3/8 in
Sheet: 31. 8 x 22.7 cm / 12 1/2 x 8 7/8 inOnly state; Edition 30 of 50Copyright The ArtistThis etching depicts the gallery at the Bedford Music Hall in Camden Town. A motley crowd is packed into tight rows. Unlike the related ‘large plate’ etching of this subject,...This etching depicts the gallery at the Bedford Music Hall in Camden Town. A motley crowd is packed into tight rows. Unlike the related ‘large plate’ etching of this subject, made a few years later, this ‘small plate’ does not include a mirror reflection of the audience. It is also notable since Sickert decided not to reverse the image and make it appear as the original did. His original drawings and paintings of this subject date from 1894 when the original Bedford was still standing, while etchings of the same subject were made some years after it had been demolished and rebuilt more grandly. They consequently became depictions of the ‘Old’ Bedford. Sickert’s decision to etch this subject suggests a partiality for both the lost building and his earlier paintings and drawings of it, which he made in several versions [Baron 2006, no. 97].Provenance
At Sotheby's, London, 20 March 1997, lot 80
The Fine Art Society, London
The Herbert and Ann Lucas Collection, Los Angeles, May 2000
Exhibitions
London, Thomas Agnew & Sons, Centenary Exhibition of Etchings & Drawings by W. R. Sickert, 15 March – 14 April 1960, cat. no. 83 and 84
London, The Fine Art Society, Walter Sickert: Paintings, Drawings & Prints, 8 May – 15 June 2000, cat. no. 15*
London, Piano Nobile, Sickert: Love, Death & Ennui. The Herbert and Ann Lucas Collection, 26 Sept. – 19 Dec. 2025, no. 14*
Literature
J. Middleton Murry, 'The Etchings of Walter Sickert', Print Collector's Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 1 (Feb. 1923), pp. 41–42, pl. 4 (illus.)
Aimée Troyen, Walter Sickert as Printmaker, exh. cat., Yale Center for British Art, 1979, cat. no. 47, pp. 34–35 (illus.)
Ruth Bromberg, Walter Sickert: Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné, Yale University Press, 2000, cat. no. 135, p. 146 (illus.)
Walter Sickert: Paintings, Drawings & Prints, exh. cat., The Fine Art Society, 2000, cat. no. 15, p. 20 (this impression illus.)*
Wendy Baron, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings, Yale University Press, 2006, cat. no. 97.19, p. 213
Kate Aspinall, Luke Farey and Stuart Lucas, Sickert: Love, Death & Ennui. The Herbert and Ann Lucas Collection, exh. cat., Piano Nobile, 2025, no. 14, p. 43 (col. illus.)*
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