Minnie Cunningham was a popular performer at the Old Bedford Music Hall in Camden Town. Sickert went there regularly and made dozens of sketches capturing the effects of light and movement on the stage and in the auditorium. Here, Sickert paints from the point of view of an audience member. He first exhibited it with the subtitle ‘I’m an old hand at love, though I’m young in years’, a quote from one of Cunningham’s songs. Sickert painted the ordinary life he saw around him.

The music hall performer Minnie Cunningham was introduced to Walter Sickert by the poet Arthur Symons at the Tivoli music hall on the Strand. This painting’s composition reveals the combined influences of the French painter Degas in its subject matter and the American painter Whistler in its use of paint, shallow pictorial space and profile format. Cunningham’s vermillion dress glows vibrantly against a dark background in the low lighting of the theatre.

Inscription:W. Sickert.’ in black paint bottom right

Accession Number:T02039

Credit Line:Purchased (William Rutherford Bequest and Grant in Aid), 1976

Provenance:

Sir Augustus Daniel (1866–1951), probably from the artist; bought at the Leicester Galleries, London, in 1951 by Sir Peter Pears (1910–1986); Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London, 1976 when purchased by Tate Gallery.