It appears that in around 1930, Philpot was in the process of reassessing both his working and personal life and the possibility of a move to Paris seems to have been mooted, perhaps mirroring the same move made by his friend Vivian Forbes earlier that year. In the spring of 1931, Philpot moved to Paris, initially staying with Forbes at Le Royal Hotel, Blvd Raspail. By the summer however he was considering taking a studio alone at 216, Blvd Raspail. A severe modernist space in the Bauhaus style, the building, which had been designed by Bruno el Houken for Helena Rubenstein, was divided into ateliers for artists. The £1,000 fee for a portrait of an American, Mrs Crane, helped his qualms over expense and he moved in shortly after. Furnished in the latest modernist taste, it was here that many of Philpot's best works were produced and the studio appears as an identifiable backdrop to a number of paintings, including Triple Fugue, Ascending Angel and the three Tom Whiskey portraits, Le Martiniquais, (whereabouts unknown), M. Julien Zaire (Tom Whiskey) (private collection) and the present work. These three images of a young cabaret performer, Julien Zaire, form a superb group of paintings that clearly mark the new direction that Philpot's painting would take. Self-assuredly modern in their imagery, all three present the sitter in evening dress, and the measured informality but clear sense of style indicate that Philpot must have taken some note of the current trends in German painting, the Neue Sachlichkeit manner, which he must have had the opportunity to see during a visit to Berlin in autumn 1931. Although the finish, lighting and close positioning of the sitter suggest comparison with Otto Dix's paintings of around 1926, the presentation perhaps has more in common with the work of Christian Schad, who had moved to Berlin in 1928. The timing of this visit coincided with huge turmoil in Germany, following very soon after the collapse of the National Bank in the summer and it is clear from Philpot's letters that not only did he find the social world of the city most illuminating, but that the burgeoning political situation affected him deeply. On returning to Paris he felt galvanized into painting and the resultant works are remarkable not only for their accomplishment but also the variety of elements that he was able to incorporate. In the Tom Whiskey images, the presentation of a strikingly handsome and stylish black sitter surrounded by the trappings of the jazz age would have been remarkably adventurous to a British audience of the period, and when they were first shown at the Leicester Galleries in June 1932 so it proved, with many of the critics remarking with a tempered enthusiasm that Philpot had moved in a new direction (perhaps an improvement on the derision that had greeted his RA submissions earlier that year). However, it is perhaps with paintings such as this rather than his earlier and more feted manner that we now associate with Philpot. Although we know very little about the sitter of this painting, it seems that inadvertently he was also responsible for the genesis of another of Philpot's most powerful images of the period, Entrance to the Tagada (private collection). As Philpot wrote to his friend Eliot Hodgkin in early 1932 'Julien writes from Nice that he has had real success there...before going to Nice Julien 'procured' for me - in the most innocent sense of that word - the door-keeper of Tagada -do you remember him - in red?...I have done a very good head of him'. (http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/glyn-philpot,-r.a.-,-1884-1937-tom-whiskey-m.-ju-70-c-lpnoh1hjvp)