The Music Room

Catalogue entry

N02872 THE MUSIC ROOM 1905–6

Inscr. ‘P W Steer 1906’ b.l.
Canvas, 40 1/4×50 (102×127).
Presented by the National Art-Collections Fund 1912.
Coll: Purchased from the artist by Sir Cyril Kendall Butler 1906 and purchased from him by the N.A.C.F.
Exh: N.E.A.C., spring 1906 (124); C.A.S., Loan Exhibition, Manchester and Leeds, 1911 (81); Tate Gallery, April–July 1929 (21); National Gallery, June–August 1943 (18); Tate Gallery, November–December 1960 (53).
Lit: N.A.C.F. Report 1912, 1913, p.12, repr.; MacColl, 1945, pp.46, 56, 107–8, 207.
Repr: Art Journal, 1906, p.233; Burlington Magazine, XLIV, 1924, facing p.176; Ironside, 1943, pl.47.

Begun in 1905 and completed early in the following year, the picture shows the same model in two different poses. According to a note in the card-index compiled by C.H. Collins Baker (deposited at the British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings) a Miss Bennett sat for this painting. The sofa and background are taken from the artist's studio.

A study, 26×31 in., for this painting belonged in 1927 to Barbizon House, into whose possession it returned September 1945 from the collection of H. M. Hepworth.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II

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