Walter Sickert was a leading figure in the London art-world of the early twentieth century. This work is from a series of paintings based on drawings Sickert made in the casino at Dieppe, which was the centre of fashionable life in the popular French resort. Sickert favoured informal compositions, of which this is a good example. The man is playing La Boule, a simpler version of roulette, with numbers going from 1 to 9 (rather than 0 to 36). The game was invented in 1923, so it would have been a new game when Sickert painted his picture. Sickert was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1924. Thereafter he often added the letters ARA to his signature, until 1934 when he was elected a full Royal Academician, and could use the letters RA.