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

Wendy Baron writes 'Sickert studied this two-figure composition from life, rather than from a photograph. This suggests that the overtly political and contemporary title was borrowed ... The revolutionary Sinn Feiner is depicted as a sad and much diminished figure, cowed by the authority of his large and dominant mother; perhaps he is a metaphor for Ireland, she for Great Britain, the motherland' (W. Baron, Sickert Paintings and Drawings, New Haven and London, 2006, p. 433).