Walter Richard Sickert

Café des Tribunaux, Dieppe

c.1890

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

In Tate Britain

Walk Through British Art: 1840

Free entry
Artist
Walter Richard Sickert 1860–1942
Medium
Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions
Support: 603 x 730 mm
frame: 830 x 955 x 108 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Presented by Miss Sylvia Gosse 1917
Reference
N03182

Display caption

In the 1890s Sickert spent most of his summers at the French port of Dieppe, and from 1896 to 1905 he lived there permanently. At that time it was popular with British artists as well as being a fashionable holiday resort for English people as indicated by a barber’s sign in English on the right. The Café des Tribunaux was at a focal point of the town, where two roads converge, and was frequented by British visitors. Both French realist and Impressionist tendencies are present in the painting.

Gallery label, November 2016

Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

Catalogue entry

Entry

First exhibited under the title Dieppe at the April exhibition of the New English Art Club in 1891, Walter Sickert’s picture attracted only modest critical attention, although all of it was positive. Generally the show received few reviews, and most of those focused on Philip Wilson Steer’s Mrs Cyprian Williams (Tate N04422). The Sunday Times noted of the exhibition that:
The present collection offers nothing to shock or amaze the average picture buyer. Mr Walter Sickert gives us no more startling studies of the music-halls ... [he] has never done anything better than ‘Dieppe’, a vivid vision of the place that palpitates with actuality, and is entirely pictorial.1
The Echo concurred, writing that Sickert was
usually the amusingly eccentric exhibitor at these shows. But this year it has pleased him to demonstrate to the outer public that there was something in his private reputation. His ‘Dieppe’, a street scene, a blue picture in a black frame, is full of motion, light, and sparkle, happy and true, distinctly the best thing he has ever shown.2
The Café des Tribunaux was one of the best-known landmarks of Dieppe, and continues its trade today. It stands at the focal point of the town on the Puits Salé, where two streets that run up from the harbour side, the Rue St Jacques and the Grande Rue, converge. Sickert shows the view down the Grande Rue, the main shopping street of Dieppe. Since 1945 the café has been refaced and the Grande Rue widened, so that the shops on the right of the picture no longer exist.
Dieppe was a popular town with British visitors and holidaymakers in this period, and the Café des Tribunaux was a common destination. As a familiar sight it might be assumed that the subject would appeal to picture buyers. The prominent British presence in Dieppe is attested to by the barber’s sign on the right of Sickert’s picture which is partly in English. Sickert himself had a long-standing connection with the town. He first went there on holiday with his parents in August 1879 and after his engagement in 1885 visited regularly. Later he had a studio there and spent much of his time between 1895 and 1905 in the town. Dieppe became a focus for a long series of paintings by Sickert from this time (including Tate N05045, N05094, N05096), but it also formed the subject of some of his earliest works, small oil on panel studies from 1885 of the beach and local sites.3

Robert Upstone
May 2009

Notes

1
Sunday Times, 12 April 1891.
2
Echo, 16 April 1891.
3
Wendy Baron, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings, New Haven and London 2006, nos.19–31, reproduced.
4
Star, 3 December 1889.
5
Matthew Sturgis, Walter Sickert: A Life, London 2005, p.222.
6
Oswald Sickert, letter to Edward Marsh, 30 August 1895; quoted in Edward Marsh, A Number of People: A Book of Reminiscences, London 1939, p.51.
7
Ruth Bromberg, Walter Sickert Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London 2000, no.56, reproduced.
8
Baron 2006, no.84.1, reproduced
9
Ibid., no.84.2, reproduced.
10
Cambridge Observer, 7 February 1893; Baron 2006, no.84.3; reproduced in Lillian Browse, Sickert, London 1960, pl.9a.
11
Marsh 1939, p.365.

Read full Catalogue entry

New English Art Club

Explore

You might like

Walter Richard Sickert, ‘Les Arcades de la Poissonnerie, Dieppe’ c.1900

Walter Richard Sickert Les Arcades de la Poissonnerie, Dieppe

c.1900
N05045
Walter Richard Sickert, ‘Interior of St Mark’s, Venice’ 1895–6

Walter Richard Sickert Interior of St Mark’s, Venice

1895–6
N05314
Walter Richard Sickert, ‘George Moore’ 1890–1

Walter Richard Sickert George Moore

1890–1
N03181
Walter Richard Sickert, ‘St Mark’s, Venice (Pax Tibi Marce Evangelista Meus)’ 1896

Walter Richard Sickert St Mark’s, Venice (Pax Tibi Marce Evangelista Meus)

1896
N05914

Walter Richard Sickert, recipient: Ethel Sands Letter from Walter Sickert to Ethel Sands, addressed Café de Rouen, Dieppe

date not known
View by appointment TGA 9125/5/104

Walter Richard Sickert, recipient: Ethel Sands Letter from Walter Sickert to Ethel Sands, addressed Café de Rouen, Dieppe

date not known
View by appointment TGA 9125/5/153
Walter Richard Sickert, ‘Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford’ 1892

Walter Richard Sickert Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford

1892
T02039
Walter Richard Sickert, ‘Dieppe, Study No. 2; Facade of St Jacques’ c.1899

Walter Richard Sickert Dieppe, Study No. 2; Facade of St Jacques

c.1899
View by appointment N05094
Walter Richard Sickert, ‘A Marengo’ c.1903–4

Walter Richard Sickert A Marengo

c.1903–4
N03621
Walter Richard Sickert, ‘La Hollandaise’ c.1906

Walter Richard Sickert La Hollandaise

c.1906
T03548

Walter Richard Sickert, recipient: Ethel Sands Letter from Walter Sickert, addressed Dieppe

date not known
View by appointment TGA 9125/5/113
Walter Richard Sickert, ‘Venice, la Salute’ c.1901

Walter Richard Sickert Venice, la Salute

c.1901
N05093
Walter Richard Sickert, ‘Two Women on a Sofa - Le Tose’ c.1903–4

Walter Richard Sickert Two Women on a Sofa - Le Tose

c.1903–4
N05296
Walter Richard Sickert, ‘Aubrey Beardsley’ 1894

Walter Richard Sickert Aubrey Beardsley

1894
N04655

Walter Richard Sickert, recipient: Ethel Sands Letter from Walter Sickert to Ethel Sands, addressed Hôtel du Commerce, Dieppe

date not known
View by appointment TGA 9125/5/107