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Download a PDF of the exhibition catalogue - The Scottish Gallery

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son Willy was making his career. However it was his relationship with <strong>the</strong> energetic<br />

young dealer Lillian Browse <strong>of</strong> Roland, Browse & Delbanco in Cork Street which was to<br />

have <strong>the</strong> greater impact, in particular nurturing his love <strong>of</strong> Sickert’s work.<br />

Blyth had purchased his first work by Sickert in 1939: Chez Vernet (1920), an<br />

exquisite example <strong>of</strong> his Dieppe period, from <strong>the</strong> fine-art dealers Robertson & Bruce<br />

in Dundee. Paintings by Sickert would have been known in <strong>Scottish</strong> galleries from <strong>the</strong><br />

early 1890s: his association with <strong>the</strong> New English Art Club and with <strong>Scottish</strong> artists such<br />

as Alexander Roche (1861–1921), Sir John Lavery (1856–1941) and Sir James Guthrie<br />

(1859–1930) would have introduced him to dealers north <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> border.<br />

An interesting letter from George Proudfoot to Blyth, dated November 1941,<br />

informs <strong>the</strong> latter <strong>of</strong> six new works by Sickert which would shortly be for sale in <strong>The</strong><br />

<strong>Scottish</strong> <strong>Gallery</strong>. <strong>The</strong> three works purchased by Blyth – Romeo and Juliet at Reculver, Bath<br />

(1937), <strong>The</strong> Doorstep (1941) and Belmont, Bath (1940) – were examples <strong>of</strong> Sickert’s<br />

late style. Between 1930 and his death in 1942, Sickert’s paint texture grew drier, <strong>the</strong><br />

application sparser, and his engagement with his subject less direct: he sometimes painted<br />

from photographs and began to produce his enigmatic re-creations <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> melodramatic<br />

images <strong>of</strong> late Victorian painters and illustrators, his <strong>The</strong> Holocaust (page 79) being a fine<br />

example.<br />

Lillian Browse remembers <strong>the</strong> discussions between herself and Blyth over <strong>the</strong><br />

late Sickerts: ‘He liked <strong>the</strong> late Sickerts too; I didn’t, preferring <strong>the</strong> “rich juicy paint” and<br />

we constantly used to tease and argue.’ Although Browse said that Blyth ‘was a passionate<br />

lover <strong>of</strong> Sickert and always adamant in his choice’, as with his collection <strong>of</strong> Peploe <strong>the</strong>re<br />

is a balance between <strong>the</strong> collector’s personal predilections and <strong>the</strong> desire for a complete<br />

representation <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> artist’s oeuvre.<br />

In 1954 he purchased one <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> few Sickert portraits in <strong>the</strong> collection,<br />

La Giuseppina (1903). It is a portrait pr<strong>of</strong>ile showing head and shoulders. <strong>The</strong> picture is<br />

light in tone, <strong>the</strong> hair forming a dark mass, and <strong>the</strong> handling free. <strong>The</strong> painting would<br />

have made an interesting comparison with Peploe’s depiction <strong>of</strong> his model Peggy Macrae<br />

– Elegance (c.1908) – purchased four years before.<br />

Thirteen <strong>of</strong> Blyth’s 24 works by Sickert were hanging in <strong>the</strong> Wilby House drawing<br />

room in 1962, including <strong>the</strong> last picture he acquired for <strong>the</strong> collection: Reclining Nude<br />

(1904), bought from Roland, Browse & Delbanco in 1956 in exchange for Cliff, Dieppe<br />

– Study in Mauve by <strong>the</strong> same artist (purchased six years before from <strong>the</strong> same gallery)<br />

and £450; even in his eighties, his ability to strike a deal remained undiminished. It is<br />

informative to compare Sickert’s Lobster on a Tray (1919), acquired in 1951, with Peploe’s<br />

Lobster (c.1902) (page 59); he told Lillian Browse, perhaps only partly tongue-in-cheek,<br />

‘that he would have liked to have turned Sickert into a Scot if he could have’.<br />

<strong>The</strong> Sickert paintings dominate <strong>the</strong> English section <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> collection and <strong>the</strong>re is<br />

no question that his regard for <strong>the</strong> artist was as substantial as that for Peploe or McTaggart.<br />

Between 1939 and 1951 Blyth purchased three works by Duncan Grant (1885–1978),<br />

two by Harold Gilman (1876–1919), four by Spencer Gore (1878–1914), three by<br />

P. Wilson Steer and four by William Nicholson (1872–1949). In 1939 he purchased a<br />

Lowry, Old Street, and in 1951 a single work by Mat<strong>the</strong>w Smith, Roses. It is interesting<br />

that <strong>the</strong> only English artists o<strong>the</strong>r than Sickert who were represented in Wilby House<br />

at <strong>the</strong> time <strong>of</strong> Blyth’s death were Wilson Steer (two works) and William Nicholson.<br />

It is fur<strong>the</strong>rmore tempting to speculate that some purchases <strong>of</strong> English and French work<br />

were to make informative contrasting comparisons with his Peploes and o<strong>the</strong>r <strong>Scottish</strong><br />

works.<br />

He purchased a work by Boudin, Les Fourges, in February 1912 but traded it in for<br />

McTaggart’s <strong>The</strong> Emigrants in April 1914. In 1943 he acquired two fur<strong>the</strong>r Boudin works,<br />

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