The Camden Town Group in Context

Lou! Lou! I Love You is a lithographic reproduction from the New Age, published on 6 July 1911 (p.228). It is part of a series of pen and ink drawings by Sickert that were reproduced in this weekly periodical, for which Sickert was also an art critic. For a description of Sickert’s career with this journal, see Anna Gruetzner Robins’s essay on this website, Walter Sickert: Art Critic for the New Age.

The study shows two coster women sitting, possibly on a bed, in an interior with decorative wallpaper. As Wendy Baron notes, the related painting for this work, Mother and Daughter: Lou Lou I Love You 1911 (private collection), was probably shown at the second exhibition of the Camden Town Group in December 1911. Another painting entitled Two Women c.1911 (fig.1) shows the same women, possibly in the same interior and wearing the same clothes and distinctive hats. Another reproduction from the New Age held in Tate Archive is Londra Benedetta! 1911 (TGA 8120/3/50). The drawing is referenced and reproduced in Wendy Baron, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings, New Haven and London 2006, no.368.1.