Lion Comique

Whistler’s followers included Theodore Roussel, Paul Maitland, Walter Richard Sickert and the young Wilson Steer - that is, the artists widely considered the leading British Impressionists. With Sidney Starr they split off from the New English Art Club. This sub-group used the label London Impressionists. The driving force was Sickert who outlined the task facing British Impressionism: to record the magic and poesy that lay all around in everyday life. London, the great metropolis, provided all the stimulating subject-matter that was necessary.

The concentration on London subject-matter was apparent in the work of Sickert, Starr, Roussel and the latter’s pupil Maitland. Urban problems resulting from 19th-century expansion in the cities - such as unemployment, poverty, child labour, alcoholism and prostitution - were almost totally absent from this art. The city was being viewed as a predominantly middle-class thing.

The music-hall pictures occupy a central position in Sickert’s oeuvre. They are skilful, effective exercises in using the contrast between the bright stage and dark auditorium. Like Degas, Sickert worked in the studio from preliminary studies. One of the first of the music-hall pictures was Lion Comique.