Walter Sickert

In 1914, Sickert set up new studios in Red Lion Square, Holborn, first at number 24 and then next door at number 26. They were on the north side of the square: ‘Facing south is what takes me’, he declared. He installed a printing press at 26 Red Lion Square, which became a productive site for painting and etching war-related compositions. A grand piano on the first floor featured in his Tipperary pictures, and it was here that he made studies for Soldiers of King Albert the Ready, a large propaganda picture calculated to stir emotions at a time when the fate of Belgium was a matter of widespread public concern.

In The Red Cross Nurse, a uniformed nurse is bending forwards to tuck in the bedsheets while a torpid patient lies on their side beneath the covers. There is a pair of slippers on the floor in the foreground. The interior is the front room of 26 Red Lion Square, which appears in various paintings including Tipperary [Baron 2006, nos. 447, 447.1]. The walls were panelled and coffered above the dado rail, the sunken areas painted pale blue and the framing areas a contrasting hue of olive grey. In both this drawing and the related etching titled Red Cross, the setting registers clearly in rectilinear subdivisions of the back wall.

This drawing was made at 1:1 scale with the Red Cross etching. Sickert has added a notched borderline to the drawing, which indicates the desired crop of the print omitting the right-hand edge. Where the drawing shows more of the chair at the right-hand side, the print only includes a sliver, but both include the shadow it casts. The drawing was traced from another drawing using carbon paper, which is apparent from the silvery medium. Using a hard pencil, Sickert then reiterated and elaborated the salient outlines. As Ruth Bromberg suggested, annotations on this drawing—‘gold strip’, ‘shiny’—indicate that it was also preliminary to a painting called Wounded [Baron 2006, no. 448], which is at 2:1 scale of both the drawing and etching.