This desolate urban view is a rare night scene by Sickert. It depicts an intersection near studios the artist rented from 1915 onward. About 1923, he repeated the composition in two prints, for one of which he borrowed the title of the popular song O Sole Mio, a humorous allusion to its illumination by streetlamp.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Maple Street, London
Artist:Walter Richard Sickert (British, Munich 1860–1942 Bathampton, Somerset)
Date:ca. 1915–23
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:30 1/4 × 20 1/8 in. (76.8 × 51.1 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Gift of Emma Swan Hall, 1998
Object Number:1998.451.2
Inscription: Signed (lower left): Sickert
the artist (until ca. 1920s; gift to Price); Mrs. Mary Price, Dieppe (from ca. 1920s); by descent to her granddaughter, Simona Pakenham Iliff, London (by 1960–80; sale, Christie's, London, October 17, 1980, no. 24, as "The Corner of Maple St., London, W.C.," ca. 1898); [Agnew, London, until 1983; stock no. 45426; sold to Hall]; Emma Swan Hall, New York (1983–98)
London. Tate Gallery. "Sickert: Paintings and Drawings," May 18–June 19, 1960, no. 121 (as "Maple Street," lent by Mrs. Simona V. Iliff).
Southampton Art Gallery. "Sickert: Paintings and Drawings," July 2–24, 1960, no. 121.
Bradford City Art Gallery. "Sickert: Paintings and Drawings," July 30–August 20, 1960, no. 121.
London. Thomas Agnew & Sons, Ltd. "The Realist Tradition: British Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings, Sculpture and Prints from 1880 to the Present Day," May 25–July 22, 1983, no. 5 (as "The Corner of Maple Street, London").
London. Tate Britain. "Walter Sickert," April 28–September 18, 2022, unnumbered cat. (colorpl. 102, as "Maple Street").
Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris. "Walter Sickert: Peindre et transgresser," October 14, 2022–January 29, 2023, unnumbered cat. (colorpl. 102, as "Maple Street").
Sickert: Paintings and Drawings. Exh. cat., Tate Gallery. [London], 1960, p. 31, no. 121, pl. VIII, dates it about 1911.
The Realist Tradition: British Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings, Sculpture and Prints from 1880 to the Present Day. Exh. cat., Thos. Agnew & Sons. London, 1983, pp. 7–8, no. 5, ill., suggests a date in or after 1896; states that the former owners believed that the artist gave it to Mary Price in the early 1920s, when she acted as his Scottish agent; observes that the artist was "never again [...] so starkly formalistic in landscape".
Lisa M. Messinger in "Recent Acquisitions. A Selection: 1998–1999." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 57 (Fall 1999), p. 58, ill. (color).
Wendy Baron. Sickert: Paintings and Drawings. New Haven, 2006, pp. 102, 449–50, no. 489, ill. (color), dates it about 1916.
Wendy Baron (2006) listed one related oil (no. 489.1; private collection) and four drawings (nos. 489.2–5; various collections). There are also two related prints, both executed about 1923. These are Maple Street (impression in The Met, 2002.465; see Ruth Bromberg, Walter Sickert, Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven, 2000, pp. 269–70, no. 212) and O Sole Mio (impression in The Met, 2002.466; Bromberg 2000, p. 271, no. 213).
The precise subject of the painting is known from Sickert's dedication on an unlocated impression of the etching Maple Street, which he gave to the actress Gwen Ffrangçon-Davies (1891–1992); as Bromberg writes, it represents "the corner of Cleveland Street, Maple Street and Southampton Street. Maple Street crosses Fitzroy Street where Sickert had a studio at no. 15."
The Museum's picture has resisted efforts to assign a precise date. In notes deposited in Department of European Paintings files (2000), Baron proposed that it was painted about 1922, that is, preceding the execution of the prints, when the artist rented the 15 Fitzroy Street studio. But she subsequently (2006) suggested that it was painted about 1916, after Sickert's move in August 1915 to a studio at 8 Fitzroy Street.
Walter Richard Sickert (British, Munich 1860–1942 Bathampton, Somerset)
ca. 1916
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