The Cigarette (Jeanne Daurmont)

The Cigarette (Jeanne Daurmont) (1906) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is among Sickert's most emblematic figure subjects, depicting a woman — identified as Jeanne Daurmont — smoking a cigarette in a casual, unposed moment that epitomises his approach to the representation of women outside conventional portraiture. The cigarette as motif was charged with social significance in 1906: smoking in public was still associated with transgressive female independence, and to paint a woman smoking was to make a statement about modernity, social freedom, and the changing position of women in European cities. Sickert encountered Daurmont during his Paris stays, and she appears to have been one of the women from the café and music hall world he frequented. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which holds the painting, is one of the world's great museums and the acquisition of this work reflects international recognition of Sickert's importance within the Post-Impressionist tradition. The 1906 date places this in Sickert's most productive phase for figure subjects: the year he painted Les Petites Belges, La Gaîté Rochechouart, and other works that together constitute his most sustained engagement with Parisian working-class women as subjects.

Oil on canvas with warm brownish tonal foundation and the characteristic layered transparency of Sickert's figure subjects. The cigarette provides a compositional focal point and directs attention to the figure's hands and mouth. The background is broadly indicated, concentrating pictorial attention on the sitter's pose and presence.