Reclining Nude (Thin Adeline)

Reclining Nude (Thin Adeline) belongs to the Camden Town series Sickert painted between 1905 and 1909, which represent his most radical departure from Victorian propriety. The figure known as 'Thin Adeline' was one of Sickert's regular models, a real working-class woman depicted without idealisation in the cramped, wallpapered interiors of Camden. These nudes caused considerable scandal when exhibited because they refused the classical tradition of the reclining nude: instead of Venus or Ariadne, Sickert showed an anonymous woman on an iron bedstead, fully grounded in social reality. The paintings were also laden with uncomfortable associations — the Camden Town Murder of 1907, in which a sex worker was killed, hung over the entire series. Sickert was unapologetically interested in these associations, using the charged domestic interior to explore power, vulnerability, and the position of women in Edwardian London.

Oil on canvas worked in loose, directional brushstrokes that describe form without flattering it. Sickert uses a restricted palette of cream, ochre, and dark olive, building the figure against a busy wallpapered ground. The paint surface is relatively thin with areas of exposed underpainting.