Oil on canvas, 32 by 40.5 cm

Provenance: purchased by John Hilton from the Michael Parkin Gallery in September 1993; thence by descent

The present work is Lessore's own take on the Sickert painting "What Shall we Do for the Rent ?" or "The Camden Town Murder", perhaps one of the artist's most powerful works which he painted around 1908 (see fig.1 below). As is often the case with the work that Lessore painted based on that by her future husband Walter Sickert, the execution and realisation is quite different from paintings by the latter, despite any similarity of subject. Lessore imitates the pose of the male figure (although at a slight angle) and her style of painting is far more graphic than that of Sickert's. The key difference rests in the omission of the nude female figure from the composition. In 1993 the Michael Parkin gallery identified the sitter as Sickert himself, although their suggested date of 1908 is likely to be too early.

Fig 1. Walter Sickert (1860-1943), What Shall we Do for the Rent, or The Camden Town Murder, c.1908, (Yale Centre for British Art)