Study for a Mural Decoration for ‘The Cave of the Golden Calf’

The Cabaret Theatre Club, later known as The Cave of the Golden Calf, was a nightclub at 9 Heddon Street W1, off Regent Street. It was the brainchild of Frida Strindberg (1872–1943), the divorced second wife of the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg (1849–1912), and opened on 26 June 1912. Strindberg was an Austrian who had inherited a large fortune at an early age, and worked variously as a translator, journalist and author; she was described by the journalist Ashley Gibson, who met her shortly before the club opened, as

Much more famously she was described by Augustus John, with whom she was infatuated, as ‘the walking hell-bitch of the Western World’.2 Jacob Epstein recalled that the project to open the club was launched at a dinner for ‘artists and those she thought would be interested in her scheme’; it should have sounded a warning for all those involved:

Strindberg chose Spencer Gore to organise the club’s decorative scheme, which was intended to reflect and contribute to its intended avant-garde status. In a preliminary brochure issued in April 1912, Strindberg stressed that the club’s ‘decoration will be entirely and exclusively the work of leading young British artists’.4 Gore was the coordinator, and commissioned others of his circle to contribute works. The project took up much of his time during this period, and it appears also to have sapped his emotional strength, for he suffered constant pressure and unnecessary interference from his patron. Generally an even-tempered man, Gore admitted his uncharacteristic annoyance in an undated letter to his pupil John Doman Turner: