Kramer regularly used his sister, Sarah, as his model from her early teens until the time
she moved in with the painter, William Roberts in London in 1922, following the birth of
their son, John in 1919. When Kramer was at the Slade and Sarah was a schoolgirl
visiting London, he introduced fellow-student Roberts to her in the ABC tearooms on
Tottenham Court Road, a favourite haunt of penniless art students. Kramer’s early
portraits portray her in a variety of guises, though most often as a brightly clothed gypsy,
wrapped in colourful shawls and scarves, a fashionable subject made popular by the
bohemian painter Augustus John (1878-1961). Many of these swift sketches are made in
pastel, so this oil is a more unusual version of the subject. Sarah recalled that these
studies were mainly done in pastel and sold to the dealer in Bradford, Matthews & Brooke,
the proceeds of which seemed, at times, to keep the Kramer household afloat. Kramer
also spent time in the nearby countryside in a gypsy caravan at Boroughbridge. Gypsy
culture was also flourishing more broadly in Yorkshire in the early 20th century. Local
socialite and writer, Dorothy Una Ratcliffe (1887-1967) compiled a library of gypsy
material at Temple Sowerby Manor, which was later donated to the University of Leeds
and edited a literary periodical, The Microcosm, which often featured articles and images
on gypsy matters, including drawings by Augustus John. The Gypsy and Folklore Gazette
(c. 1912) described Romany women as ‘mostly clad in shawls and skirts of many colours
whilst the heads of the married members are covered with red scarves’. This work was
shown in the 1960 retrospective exhibition, Jacob Kramer at Leeds City Art Gallery, as
catalogue no. 13.