Walter Richard Sickert 1860-1942
The Village Stores, Chagford, c1915
oil on canvas
16 by 20 inches
signed

Provenance
Beaux Arts Gallery, LondonPaul Posen

Literature
To be included in Wendy Baron's forthcoming catalogue raisonné.



In 1914 Sickert was forced to return from France when war broke out. In the summer of the following year, finding himself unable to travel to Dieppe, and driven out of London by his fear of air raids, Sickert went with his wife Catherine to Chagford, a village in Devon which they had previously visited while courting.
During his stay Sickert painted a number of sketches of village life, several were of shops with bicycles propped outside, some of which he later painted up into oils. These studies and paintings are characterised by a lightness of paint handling, and pretty 'country' palette. In this particular painting the signage appears to read 'Collins Supply Stores'. Sickert first depicted shop fronts while drawing alongside Whistler in Chelsea (see Whistler's Chelsea Shops, c1880s, coll.Freer Gallery Washington) and he returned to the subject throughout his career, most notably painting The Hat Shop, Dieppe in 1906, and much later the London scenes Easter, 1928 and Barnsbury, 1928. No doubt Sickert was attracted by the theatricality of the window displays, especially when lit up at night, in contrast to the ever changing human activity of shoppers coming and going.
Sickert moved to Bath in 1916, and stayed there until the end of the war. A cosmopolitan by disposition, Bath with its grand classsical architecture was a suitable compromise for the painter, who was rather out of place in a small English village.