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Signed in pencil below the image (lower left), titled and dated below the plate Regent Street and 1921.
Provenance: Michael Parkin Fine Art, London.
As art historian Wendy Baron wrote, Sylvia Gosse’s modest and shy personality “had much to do with the undervaluation of her talents”. [1] Living in Sickert’s shadow during his lifetime, “she devoted much of her energies, and not a little of her money, to helping Sickert at various times of his life.” [2] However, her work was characterized by innate qualities, “in particular her spare touch and bold sense of design, which having first been drawn forth and encouraged by Sickert then matured to influence him in return”. [3]
In the present etching, Gosse chose to represent the crowded Mason Lewis in Regent Street, one of London’s most important roads. A critic’s comment from 1925 well illustrates the scene: ”Behind the slightness and delicacy of handling hides a strength of method not at first sight apparent. Amidst the variety of subject we encounter a keenness of observation, an almost disconcerting sense of of humor – disconcerting because it is quite unobtrusive, innocently if deceptively gentle and, at the same time, unfailingly, alert”. [3]
[1] W. Baron, “Sylvia Gosse” in Sale Catalogue, Michael Parkin Gallery, Sylvia Gosse 1881-1968. Paintings and Prints, London, 1989, no page number [pp.10-17].
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] A critic’s comment in the Print Collector’s Quarterly of 1925, as quoted by Charlotte Haenlein, MALTZAHN GALLERY, in For The Sickert Women and the Sickert Girls, 1974, Parkin Gallery website.
