Oil on canvas, 35.5 by 21.5 cm

Provenance: with Jonathan Clark Ltd in 1992

Lessore's interest in theatre and music hall pre-dated the meeting of her future husband, Walter Sickert, during the First World War. Likewise, whilst it easy to focus on the two artists' similarities in subjects like these (the New Bedford also being a favourite subject of Sickert), they are also striking in their differences. Lessore's style as a painter (one that Sickert observed out when admiring her work in the inuagural London Group shows) was far more graphic, picking out the underlining sense of design in the subject matter as well as the individual character of her audience members. The present works are studies for a larger painting of the New Bedford that Lessore completed in 1919 (see Christie's, The Painters of Camden Town (1905-1920), loan exhibition cat,.1988, p.139, no.108).