Provenance

Grace Wheatley; Private collection

Note: Wendy Baron has catalogued the drawing as follows -

'This is a drawing related to Sickert’s painting of Nina Hamnett and her Norwegian husband Edgar de Bergen (who worked as an artist under the name Roald Kristian) painted c.1915-16 (see p.430, C.454 of my 2006 book).  The marriage, to quote Richard Shone, ‘disintegrated in grim recriminations and threadbare lodgings’.  The couple, who had met in Paris, married in London in 1914.  However, in 1917, de Bergen who had not registered in England as an alien, was deported.  They never met again.  I list six drawings known to me related to the painting. It is, however, very close indeed to one of the drawings I list, and by good fortune illustrate, as 454.5.  In my catalogue note I suggest that the two figures in this drawing are not Hamnett and Kristian.  They are less gloomy and less detached from each other; the woman wears a hat; the couch is different (with a back); the man wears military uniform.'

The sitters are in fact the artists Grace and John Wheatley who both studied under Sickert. John Wheatley, depicted here in uniform, served in the Artists' Rifles during WW1.