Major Acquisition of a Sickert Fan at The Fan Museum

A very important fan painted around 1889 by the British artist Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) was acquired through a very generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, augmented by further donations. The fan, painted in gouache on vellum and mounted on to a grey mother of pearl monture depicts the artiste Little Dot Hetherington performing on stage at the Old Bedford Theatre, Camden. The spot-lit performer raising her face to the gods sings the song 'The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery' (also made famous by Marie Lloyd). The subject is copied from an earlier Sickert painting and has been slightly amended to suit the fan leaf shape, which Sickert and his more famous contemporaries such as Degas were experimenting with.