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

This painting has been described as a Venetian work of 1903. However, it almost certainly belongs to a series of London Fitzroy Street interiors of circa 1906 in which Sickert explored the compositional tensions he could create by juxtaposing a standing nude and her reflection as seen in the glass of an arched mirrored wardrobe door.

Wendy Baron describes the present painting: 'The back of a standing nude is seen reflected in the arched cheval glass; the 'real' figure is cut off abruptly by the right edge of the picture' (op. cit., p. 323).

W.B.