A rarely seen Walter Sickert painting, *Ennui* (1913), will be offered for sale in a selling exhibition at Piano Nobile gallery in London on 26 September. The work, once owned by Hollywood actor Edward G. Robinson and later by collectors Herbert and Ann Lucas, has not been publicly exhibited since 2001. Priced around £750,000, it is one of five versions Sickert painted in the 1910s depicting a pub landlord and his wife; three are held by British institutions including the Royal Collection and the Ashmolean Museum. The sale also includes a Sickert pastel of a sex worker unseen since 1908, plus works from his Dieppe period.
The sale matters because it brings to light a significant but little-seen work by a major British painter, and because the Lucas collection—comprising over 60 Sickert prints, works on paper, and sketches—offers insight into the artist's thematic and technical development. The painting's literary connection to Virginia Woolf, who wrote a pamphlet about the Ashmolean version, adds art-historical interest. The event also underscores the ongoing market for early 20th-century British art and the role of private collections in preserving rarely exhibited works.