In the fall of 1906, Sickert painted a number of models who posed for him in his Paris hotel room, later recalling that "the alcove of the beds in some of the rooms are beautifully lit." A group of these pictures, which are reminiscent of keyhole views by Degas and Bonnard that Sickert knew, were included in an exhibition held at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris in early 1907. In the accompanying catalogue, this work was called La Maigre Adeline (Thin Adeline).
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Artwork Details
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Title:Reclining Nude (Thin Adeline)
Artist:Walter Richard Sickert (British, Munich 1860–1942 Bathampton, Somerset)
Date:1906
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:18 1/8 × 15 1/8 in. (46 × 38.4 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982
Object Number:1984.433.24
Inscription: Signed (lower left): Sickert
[Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, from 1906; stock no. 15229, as "Femme Nue Couchée"; one of ten works bought from the artist on November 17, 1906; sold later the same year to Tavernier]; Adolphe Tavernier, Paris (from 1906); ?Werner Dücker, Düsseldorf; Scofield Thayer, New York (probably ca. 1921/23–d. 1982; on loan to the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass., 1931/39–1982)
Paris. Bernheim-Jeune. "Exposition Sickert," January 10–19, 1907, no. 16 (as "La Maigre Adeline").
London. Royal Academy of Arts. "Sickert: Paintings," November 20, 1992–February 14, 1993, no. 57.
Amsterdam. Van Gogh Museum. "Sickert: Paintings," February 25–May 31, 1993, no. 57.
London. Tate Britain. "Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris, 1870–1910," October 5, 2005–January 15, 2006, no. 93.
Washington. Phillips Collection. "Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris, 1870–1910," February 18–May 14, 2006, no. 93.
Paris. Musée d'Orsay. "Splendeurs et misères: Images de la prostitution, 1850–1910," September 22, 2015–January 17, 2016, unnumbered cat. (colorpl. 124, as "La Maigre Adeline").
Amsterdam. Van Gogh Museum. "Easy Virtue. Prostitution in French Art, 1850–1910," February 19–June 19, 2016, no. 145.
London. Tate Britain. "Walter Sickert," April 28–September 18, 2022, unnumbered cat. (colorpl. 115, as "La Maigre Adeline").
Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris. "Walter Sickert: Peindre et transgresser," October 14, 2022–January 29, 2023, unnumbered cat. (colorpl. 115, as "La Maigre Adeline").
Walter Richard Sickert. Letter to William Rothenstein. undated [fall 1906] [Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., publ. in Wendy Baron, "Sickert," London, 1973, pp. 93, 99–100 n. 1, as an excerpt from the first of six letters to Rothenstein dating to fall 1906, in which he discusses his current work], reports that he is "doing a whole set of interiors in the hotel, mostly nudes".
Louis Vauxcelles. "La Vie Artistique: Exposition Walter Sickert à Felix Fénéon." Gil Blas (January 12, 1907) [excerpt, both in French and in English translation, published in Robins 2005, pp. 178, 215 n. 42], of this work and others, writes, "Voici d'abord une série de nus, peints au crépuscule, parmi: désordre pauvre des chambres garnies d'hôtels. Ce sont des filles, affalées sur le lit défait, des filles au corps flêtri, fatigués par les dures besognes de la prostitution. Nulle déclamation, nulle [?] caricatural, rien qu'évoque le rictus d'un Degas, d'un Lautrec, ou la misogynie d'un Rouault" ("Here is a series of nudes, painted at twilight, amongst the improvised disorder of cluttered hotel rooms. Here are whores collapsed on the unmade bed, whores with withered bodies, weary from the harsh work of prostitution. No declamation, no grotesque outrage, nothing which recalls the grin of a Degas, a Lautrec, or the misogyny of a Rouault.").
Wendy Baron. Letter to Gail Stavitsky. May 12, 1987, states that it belongs to a series of nudes painted by Sickert in his room at the Hôtel du Quai Voltaire, Paris, in fall 1906; notes that this is the only known depiction of the model Adeline; places it within the development of Sickert's compositions focusing on foreshortened nudes.
Wendy Baron inSickert: Paintings. Ed. Wendy Baron and Richard Shone. Exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts. London, 1992, pp. 184–85, no. 57, ill. (color), notes that Sickert was in Paris in the fall of 1906 to attend the Salon d'automne, where he was exhibiting; confirms that this is one of a group of nudes painted during this stay, in his room at the Hôtel du Quai Voltaire; observes that the model's abandoned pose is unusual but not unique in his work; suggests that Sickert's nudes at this moment were influenced by Cézanne.
Anna Gruetzner Robins in Anna Gruetzner Robins and Richard Thomson. Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris, 1870–1910. Exh. cat., Tate Britain. London, 2005, pp. 164, 167, 178, 207, 224, no. 93, ill. p. 170 (color), observes "faint echoes of Bonnard" in this painting.
Wendy Baron. Sickert: Paintings and Drawings. New Haven, 2006, pp. 63–64, 137, 324–25, no. 273, ill., states that Sickert painted it in his room in the Hôtel du Quai Voltaire, Paris, in fall 1906; adds that it was called "Femme Nue Couchée" in the Bernheim-Jeune stock book and proposes that the title was changed to "La Maigre Adeline" for the 1907 exhibition; identifies it as "Le Modèle" in Druet's "postcard" series; mentions that Werner Dücker "seems" to have owned it.
Gabrielle Houbre inSplendeurs & misères: Images de la prostitution, 1850–1910. Exh. cat., Musée d'Orsay. Paris, 2015, p. 36, as "La Maigre Adeline".
Splendeurs & misères: Images de la prostitution, 1850–1910. Exh. cat., Musée d'Orsay. Paris, 2015, p. 286, colorpl. 124, as "La Maigre Adeline".
Easy Virtue: Prostitution in French Art, 1850–1910. Exh. cat., Van Gogh Museum. Amsterdam, 2016, p. 179, no. 145, ill. p. 163 (color).
Anna Gruetzner Robins in Jane Munro. Degas: A Passion for Perfection. Exh. cat., Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. New Haven, 2017, p. 219, compares this nude model to those in Degas's brothel monotypes and Frank Auerbach's "Reclining Model in the Studio II" (1962, private collection); in the latter, notes that both pose and "murky, tonal palette" recall those in The Met's picture.
Wendy Baron inWalter Sickert. Ed. Emma Chambers. Exh. cat., Tate Britain. London, 2022, no. 115 (color) [French ed., Paris, 2022], as "La Maigre Adeline".
Walter Richard Sickert (British, Munich 1860–1942 Bathampton, Somerset)
1914–15
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