Sylvia Gosse (1881-1968) – Etching – St John’s Wood 1910

A wonderful interior scene. A woman in a large hat seated on a chaise turned away from us. What is she doing. Is it the artist herself? Has she just come home, or is she about to go out. So much light is streaming in.The notation is “St John’s Wood”, a neighborhood in London, and “unique proof”. So, instead setting is most like a classroom at the St John’s Wood School of Art where Gosse first studied, the shelves full of random objects handy for still life arrangements and the couch ideal for a model, to keep her comfortable as she holds a pose. Yes, a place of work. And learning. Illuminated. The starting point of her real life.

Measures 10 1/8″ x 12 1/2″. Signed and titled and annotated by the artist as a “unique proof”.

Laura Sylvia Gosse. Painter in oil and watercolor and etcher of landscape, still life, figure studies and interiors. Born in London, the daughter of writer and critic Sir Edmund Gosse, she studied at the St John’s Wood School of Art, Royal Academy Schools and the Westminister School of Art under Walter Sickert. From 1909–14 she taught at Sickert’s Rowlandson House, London, school. His influence is evident in much of her work. She exhibited at the AAA, RA, LG, RBA and RE and had her first one-man show at the Carfax Gallery in 1913. Like Sickert, she painted a lot in London and in Dieppe. Her work was reproduced in magazines such as The Studio, Apollo and Print Collectors’ Quarterly and is in many British and foreign collections, including the British Museum, Tate Gallery and Ashmolean Museum.