Gallery Box at the New Bedford Music Hall

Walter Sickert’s painting shows the richly decorated interior of the New Bedford Music Hall.

The first, or Old, Bedford Music Hall, located between Arlington Street and Camden High Street, opened in 1861 but burnt down in 1896. The New Bedford opened on the same site in 1899. A purpose built music hall, it had comfortable seats, an orchestra pit and a large stage. It saw its last performance in January 1951, after which the building lay derelict until demolition in 1969.

Sickert, who had been an actor in his youth and remained a keen theatre-goer, regularly visited both Bedford Music Halls and made numerous paintings of them. In December 1907, he wrote to a friend:
'I am returned to my old love the Bedford & I hope to illustrate the new building as I have already done the old one.'

This is probably his first painting of the rebuilt theatre. Other canvases, showing slightly different views of the same subject, are in the Tate Gallery and Leeds City Art Gallery.