A Room of One's Own 1890–1915

Edouard Vuillard, Girl in an Interior  c.1910

Vuillard was associated with a group of young artists known as the Nabis, whose anti-naturalist, decorative style was influenced by Gauguin. He frequently used friends as models, but he was not a portraitist in a traditional sense. ‘I don’t make portraits’, he once said, ‘I paint people in their homes’. He obsessively studied the everyday objects and furnishings of middle class interiors, and represented his models as they might be seen by a friend or member of their family. The model here is Mme Alfred Savoir, known as Miche, an acquaintance of Vuillard’s friend and dealer, Jos Hessel.

Gallery label, December 2011

Walter Richard Sickert, Woman Washing her Hair  1906

Sickert was committed to painting everyday life, and here he shows the woman in circumstances in which she might naturally be naked. This sets her apart from the artistic tradition of female nudes, which were conventionally shown inactive and with little context.Sickert learnt much from the French artist Edgar Degas, including such ‘through the key hole’ views. In this way the woman is shown as if we have glimpsed her without her knowing we are there.This is one of a series of nudes Sickert painted in his studio in Paris in autumn 1906.

Gallery label, May 2007

Harold Gilman, Madeleine Knox  c.1910–1

This portrait of artist Madeleine Knox gives little away about her profession or character. Instead, the quiet domestic setting, gentle colours and dappled brushwork create a meditative atmosphere. Knox’s thoughtful pose is enigmatic: she fingers her coat but it is unclear whether she has just returned from somewhere, or is about to leave. Gilman died in the post-war influenza epidemic at the age of 43.

Gallery label, October 2020

Nina Hamnett, The Landlady  1918

Lady Edna Clarke Hall, Still Life of a Basket on a Chair  1900

Edna Clarke Hall (née Waugh) was one of the star pupils of the Slade School of Art in the 1890s. The training at the Slade stressed the importance of vigorous drawing and Hall was known primarily for graphic work, particularly her illustrations to the novel Wuthering Heights. She also wrote poetry. Despite receiving lessons in oil painting from her friend Gwen John, this is the artist’s only known oil painting. The collection of still-life objects suggests a portrait composed of clothing.

Gallery label, January 2025

Mabel Nicholson, Family Group  c.1911

Mabel Nicholson used her children as models, sometimes in dramatic poses or costumes. Here, she depicts her children with their nanny, but the lack of interaction between the figures challenges expectations of a happy domestic scene. Some see the figures’ positions as representing gender expectations. The daughter’s pose echoes that of her nanny, perhaps associating her future with a nurturing role, while her youngest son plays with a model ship, perhaps suggesting travel and adventure. Nicholson had a successful artistic career, holding a solo show at the Chenil Gallery in London in 1912, before her early death in the influenza epidemic of 1918.

Gallery label, January 2025

Sir William Orpen, The Mirror  1900

The sitter in this portrait is Emily Scoble, a model from the Slade School of Art. Orpen was briefly engaged to her. The room is apparently an accurate portrayal of Orpen’s lodgings, but the shallow pictorial depth and decorative, or ‘aesthetic,’ arrangement of objects is based on Whistler’s famous portrait of his mother in profile. The circular mirror on the wall reflects the artist painting at his easel. This is a device which Orpen borrowed from a 15th-century painting by Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, which he would have seen on display at the National Gallery.

Gallery label, July 2017

Ethel Sands, The Chintz Couch  c.1910–1

Walter Richard Sickert, Ennui  c.1914

The title of this painting means ‘boredom’ in French. Sickert suggests the strained relationship between the figures by their lack of communication. Despite being close together, the man and woman face in opposite directions, staring off into space. They appear almost trapped in their surroundings. The furnishings reinforce the theme, in particular the bell jar containing stuffed birds, suggesting a suffocating environment. Sickert’s works give us no moral or narrative certainty. He leaves it up to us to interpret the image.

Gallery label, August 2020

Gwen John, Chloë Boughton-Leigh  c.1907

Gwen John settled in Paris in 1904 where she painted this portrait of her close friend

Chloë Boughton-Leigh. The simple interior was probably the artist’s studio. When this

work was exhibited in London in 1908, it was admired by reviewers for its sincerity and for John’s use of the colours of ‘ordinary life’ to depict the ‘lasting effects of beauty’. The sandy browns and light greys show the subtle changes in tone that John had learned from Whistler whose classes she attended at the Académie Carmen in Montparnasse.

Gallery label, January 2025

Philip Wilson Steer, Mrs Cyprian Williams and her Two Little Girls  1891

The unusual perspective of this composition, looking down on the subject, was influenced by the work of French artist Edgar Degas and the design of Japanese prints. It is used to convey a sense of claustrophobia and confinement. The wife of an art collector, Helen Cyprian Williams was a successful amateur artist renowned for her distinctive features and volatile temperament. The uneasy shift in scale from Mrs Williams to her daughters – and her gaze away from them, lost in thought – reinforces some undefined sense of separation. Her stillness invites us to speculate about what is running through her mind.

Gallery label, May 2007

Philip Wilson Steer, Seated Nude: The Black Hat  c.1900

Wilson Steer, one of the most impressionist of British painters, posed his nudes in everyday settings, and here the model is playfully trying on a hat she has found in the studio. Steer did not exhibit this sketch, and it was chosen for the Tate Gallery directly from his studio in 1941, by the then Director Sir John Rothenstein. Steer told him ‘friends told me it was spoiled by the hat; they thought it indecent that a nude should be wearing a hat, so it’s never been shown’.

Gallery label, February 2016

Harold Gilman, Mrs Mounter at the Breakfast Table  1916–17

Gilman was a member of the Camden Group of painters whose commitment to the painting of everyday life is typified in this work. Mrs Mounter was the artist’s landlady. He shows her with a blank, perhaps melancholy expression. She seems almost dominated by the very ordinary tea pot, jug and cups which speak, perhaps, of a simple life. Such simplicity in a painting would have seemed radical to audiences used to seeing more lavish subjects.

Gallery label, September 2016

Spencer Gore, North London Girl  c.1911–12

The Camden Town Group held regular gatherings on Saturday afternoons at rooms Sickert had rented in Fitzroy Street. Here patrons were shown new works, given tea and invited to buy paintings. Gore's portrait is of the woman who served the tea on these occasions and kept the rooms tidy. Although perhaps best known for his landscapes, urban scenes and theatre pictures, Gore was a gifted and sensitive portraitist, although he never undertook formal commissions. Here he pays as much attention to the textures, patterns and colours of his sitter's clothes and her surroundings as he does to her face.

Gallery label, September 2004

Pierre Bonnard, Nude Bending Down  1923

A woman is glimpsed quietly wiping her leg. The informality of the pose suggests that the model has been caught unawares rather than posing for the painting. Pierre Bonnard was part of a group of French ‘intimiste’ painters, including Edouard Vuillard (on display in this room), who specialised in capturing everyday life in domestic spaces. Bonnard made many nude studies of his companion, Marthe (Maria Boursin), whom he often depicted bathing. Marthe took frequent baths, using water therapy as treatment for a tubercular condition.

Gallery label, January 2025

Sylvia Pankhurst, Suffrage teaset  1909

Mary McEvoy, Interior: Girl Reading  1901

Mary McEvoy attended the Slade School of Fine Art in the 1890s alongside Gwen John. Slade students were encouraged to study paintings in the National Gallery. Many were influenced by the 17th-century Dutch Old Masters who often depicted women quietly absorbed in everyday indoor activities. McEvoy’s painting shows a contemporary interior, a subject that became popular with artists in the early 1900s, including William Orpen (on display in this room). Many paintings of this genre were exhibited at the New English Art Club in the 1900s and McEvoy’s picture was shown there in 1902.

Gallery label, January 2025

Gwen John, Self-Portrait  1902

Gwen John was successful in exhibiting and selling her work in both London and Paris, but as a woman in an industry still largely dominated by men, she had to work hard for recognition. John made this self-portrait at the beginning of her career, after training at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Her expression of quiet determination communicates John’s desire to establish herself as an artist on her own terms. This work has become a defining image of the increased presence and confidence of women in the 20th-century art world.

Gallery label, January 2025