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Lot Essay
Behind the Blind is a painting of exceptional beauty. It also marks the moment when Gore and Walter Sickert worked most closely together. Gore had met Sickert on a visit to Dieppe in 1904; they established an immediate rapport regardless of their 18-year age difference. It was the younger painter who persuaded Sickert, living abroad since 1898, to settle again in London. Once back in London, Sickert immediately re-estabished himself as an artist unafraid of controversy. He set out to shake the smug propriety of the established art world, and did so with his intimate figure paintings. He took rooms, invariably squalid, around Fitzrovia and Camden Town to use as settings for the models he recruited from the neighbouring streets. In October 1905 Sickert took lodgings at 6 Mornington Crescent. Soon afterwards he rented the first floor rooms at the same address as a painting studio (a dramatic bonus was his landlady's belief that the young man to whom she had let the rooms some sixteen years before was Jack the Ripper).
From 1909 until 1912 Gore too rented rooms in Mornington Crescent, at no. 31. However in 1906, when he lived round the corner, he often worked in Sickert's rooms at no. 6. This is where he painted Behind the Blind. The setting - the first floor front room - and furnishings are identical to those used by Sickert for several paintings of a nude he made in 1906 and 1907. The bed is placed parallel to the picture plane, behind the open interconnecting doors from the back room; the chest of drawers is silhouetted against the window topped by an oval dressing table glass with curved supports; a thin light filters through the slatted blind. But there the similarities end. Sickert's Mornington Crescent nudes of 1906 are nearly all seen contre-jour, silhouetted darkly against the blind. They are remote and featureless. Nearly all sit or stand on the far side of the bed, their backs turned to the spectator. Gore's figure, on the other hand, is on the near side of the bed. Light falls from outside the picture to show off her lilac skirt and yellow blouse; she turns her head to face the spectator, proud and direct. Where Sickert's handling is flat and cursory, Gore's is broken and feathery. Sickert's colours centre on a range of umbers and black; Gore's palette is much more varied, the colours pretty and lighter in tone. These differences underline how Gore's sensibility, even when he adopted intimate Sickertian themes, dictated a tender approach and treatment. They also support Sickert's contention in an article written four years later (New Age, 'The Spirit of the Hive', 26 May 1910) that it was Gore who had taught him to recast his painting entirely and 'observe colour in the shadows'.
Gore generally signed paintings only when he sold them. After his premature death from pneumonia in March 1914 his widow, together with his close friend Harold Gilman, sorted out all the paintings left in his studio. They stamped the artist's name [S.F.GORE] within a boxed outline on the unsigned paintings, and Gilman placed labels on the back recording the title and date of each work. The labels were numbered according to their place within the chronological sequence of Gore's brief career. Many such labels were removed by new owners and framers before their importance was appreciated. Behind the Blind bears the studio stamp. Although it has lost its original Gilman label, a notebook kept by Frederick Gore, the artist's son, lists the numbers and information provided by his mother and Gilman. Behind the Blind was no. 34 in the book. Its immediate predecessor, Nude (no. 33) is so far untraced, but it too was surely painted in Sickert's rooms. Not only is it the first and only nude listed before 1907; Nude and Behind the Blind are the earliest intimate figure subjects to be treated by Gore who had hitherto concentrated almost exclusively on landscapes, with the occasional interruption of a portrait (two are recorded) or a ballet (three between 1903 and 1905).
It is peculiarly satisfying that a painting of such quality should also be of great historical interest. Behind the Blind embodies the essence of the fruitful collaboration between Gore and Sickert which, in its turn, helped to shape the character of progressive painting in Britain during the first decade of the twentieth century.
W.B.
From 1909 until 1912 Gore too rented rooms in Mornington Crescent, at no. 31. However in 1906, when he lived round the corner, he often worked in Sickert's rooms at no. 6. This is where he painted Behind the Blind. The setting - the first floor front room - and furnishings are identical to those used by Sickert for several paintings of a nude he made in 1906 and 1907. The bed is placed parallel to the picture plane, behind the open interconnecting doors from the back room; the chest of drawers is silhouetted against the window topped by an oval dressing table glass with curved supports; a thin light filters through the slatted blind. But there the similarities end. Sickert's Mornington Crescent nudes of 1906 are nearly all seen contre-jour, silhouetted darkly against the blind. They are remote and featureless. Nearly all sit or stand on the far side of the bed, their backs turned to the spectator. Gore's figure, on the other hand, is on the near side of the bed. Light falls from outside the picture to show off her lilac skirt and yellow blouse; she turns her head to face the spectator, proud and direct. Where Sickert's handling is flat and cursory, Gore's is broken and feathery. Sickert's colours centre on a range of umbers and black; Gore's palette is much more varied, the colours pretty and lighter in tone. These differences underline how Gore's sensibility, even when he adopted intimate Sickertian themes, dictated a tender approach and treatment. They also support Sickert's contention in an article written four years later (New Age, 'The Spirit of the Hive', 26 May 1910) that it was Gore who had taught him to recast his painting entirely and 'observe colour in the shadows'.
Gore generally signed paintings only when he sold them. After his premature death from pneumonia in March 1914 his widow, together with his close friend Harold Gilman, sorted out all the paintings left in his studio. They stamped the artist's name [S.F.GORE] within a boxed outline on the unsigned paintings, and Gilman placed labels on the back recording the title and date of each work. The labels were numbered according to their place within the chronological sequence of Gore's brief career. Many such labels were removed by new owners and framers before their importance was appreciated. Behind the Blind bears the studio stamp. Although it has lost its original Gilman label, a notebook kept by Frederick Gore, the artist's son, lists the numbers and information provided by his mother and Gilman. Behind the Blind was no. 34 in the book. Its immediate predecessor, Nude (no. 33) is so far untraced, but it too was surely painted in Sickert's rooms. Not only is it the first and only nude listed before 1907; Nude and Behind the Blind are the earliest intimate figure subjects to be treated by Gore who had hitherto concentrated almost exclusively on landscapes, with the occasional interruption of a portrait (two are recorded) or a ballet (three between 1903 and 1905).
It is peculiarly satisfying that a painting of such quality should also be of great historical interest. Behind the Blind embodies the essence of the fruitful collaboration between Gore and Sickert which, in its turn, helped to shape the character of progressive painting in Britain during the first decade of the twentieth century.
W.B.