Signed, inscribed with title and dated (verso): Arthur Hacker/1910

With further inscription (to Dora) also verso

Oil on panel, 12 1/2  by 15 3/4 ins (32 by 40 cm)

Provenance: with the artist’s family in 1919

Until his election as a Royal Academician in 1910 (the date of the present work) Hacker had made his reputation as a flamboyant portraitist and subject painter in a grand late Victorian-Edwardian style. Following his election he painted a small but significant group of nocturnal views of London taking both his fellow Academicians and public by surprise. More forward-looking and inspired than his previous work these probably now stand as his masterpieces, with one of them A wet night Piccadilly Circus becoming his Royal Academy Diploma work. In the present painting Hacker captures the warm haze of gaslight over a busy wet evening in a manner that recalls both Turner and Whistler in its abstract play of tone and suggested form.