In the winter of 1898 Sickert left London for Dieppe, supposedly because of his recent divorce, but his chief motive was that he wanted a change of subject matter well away from the portrait work of his London years. The cathedral church of St Jacques was one such subject that Sickert painted from different views and in differing light conditions; the most completely realised painting is in the collection of the Whitworth Art Gallery www.whitworth.man.ac.ukand shows St Jacques at dusk. Sickert also made a large number of highly finished coloured drawings of the subject and it is likely that these were made at the same time as the paintings but were not intended as preparatory drawings but finished works in their own right. There were uncharacteristic of the artist’s work at the time and were most likely inspired by commercial motives. Mr Brown from the Fine Art Society in London visited Sickert in Dieppe and advised him that 'watercolours always sold well’. Sickert reported to a friend that Brown had taken two drawings back to London to discuss the possibility of an exhibition of such work at their London gallery.