Walter Richard Sickert, A.R.A. (1860-1942)

The present composition is one of a series of works known within Sickert's oeuvre as his Echoes which were painted from the late 1920s onwards. The Housekeeper's Niece is painted in the manner of, indeed after, the Victorian painter Sir John Gilbert (1817-1897). Gilbert is remembered as a 'master of romantic and melodramatic subjects' and for his depiction of 'the dazzling saloons of the aristocracy' which clearly caught Sickert's imagination (see W. Baron, Sickert Paintings and Drawings, New Haven and London, 2006, p. 502).