Walter Sickert

Sickert described his ‘favourite kind of woman’ as ‘my own particular brand of frump’. His charlady Marie Hayes modelled for “Sally”, and she satisfied his stated preference in life models: ‘Very fat or very thin but middling, never!’ The name Sally was likely an imaginative fancy of Sickert’s, and he also christened certain coster girl subjects ‘Sally Waters’, which evoked the nursery rhyme about a young girl ‘crying and weeping for a young man’. Only three prints were taken from the large plate of Sally: cat. 37 is a unique proof of the first state; two proofs of the second state exist, one of which is in the British Museum. The pencil inscription ‘S.G. imp.’ shows that these impressions of the large plate were printed by Sylvia Gosse, who was then helping Sickert to run his school at Rowlandson House, which included an etching studio on the top floor. The toilette scene depicted in Sally was studied from life at Sickert’s house in Harrington Square—a stone’s throw from Rowlandson House—where he moved with his new wife Christine in 1911. In contrast to the rapidly sketched silhouettes of the large plate, which have a preparatory flavour, the small plate of Sally is fully resolved and the whole scene comes into focus. It is the corner of a room, with a patterned curtain at the right and a mantelpiece at the left.