Walter Sickert

Bonne Fille holds a significant place in Sickert's artistic progression, situated between his interior portraits in Venice from 1903-04 and the renowned Camden Town bedsits from 1906 onwards. This period marked a pivotal moment in Sickert's career, as he fearlessly depicted the female nude in a manner that both shocked contemporary audiences and solidified his position as a leading advocate of modern painting.

Having spent five years primarily focused on capturing the streets, buildings, and canals of Dieppe and Venice, Sickert shifted his attention to painting figures indoors in 1904, once again in Venice. According to Wendy Baron, this shift represented a radical change in his aesthetic interests (W. Baron, Sickert, Paintings and Drawings, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2006, p.49). Working with a small group of models, Sickert repeatedly painted them in similar settings and poses, refining the essential tones, patterns, and character of his subjects.

In Bonne Fille, the sitter's posture appears awkward, with her neck twisted towards the viewer as she sits on the bed. The bed and bedding are suggested through lively brushwork, and colour is used sparingly, with fleeting moments of highlighted areas. This increasingly spontaneous and expressive handling of paint became a defining characteristic of Sickert's work. During this period, he honed qualities such as swiftness, directness, and economy, which were fully showcased upon his return to London. 

As Baron comments, ‘it is all but impossible to separate the figure pictures, mainly nudes on metal-framed bedsteads, which Sickert did in France in 1904-05 from those he did in London after his return in 1905. As was usual in Sickert’s work, there are clear compositional interrelationships between the various bedstead pictures which, in this case, extend beyond those executed at about the same date, in the same studio, or even in the same country’ (W. Baron. op. cit., p.55).