Walter Sickert

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.’