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

Vernet's in Dieppe was a favourite cafe frequented by artists including Sickert and Edgar Degas (1834-1917). Sickert trained at the Slade School of Fine Art and was apprenticed to James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), through whom he met Degas. Degas encouraged Sickert to extend the range of his subject matter. In 1887 he began to paint the interiors of London music halls, by 1889 he was able to achieve the complex construction of Little Dot Hetherington at the Old Bedford in which the stage is seen as a reflection in a great glass mirror just as in the present drawing of Vernet's cafe which probably dates from around 1920 and can be related to other works of Vernet's cafe from this date.