Sade

SHEILA ROCK (B. 1952)
Sade
signed and numbered '2/30' in ink (reverse)
color archival print
20 × 24 inches (50.8 × 61.0 cm)
this is number 2 from an edition of 30
this work is sold unframed and unmatted

Red lipstick and a single pearl earring are the only accents against her black top and the softly painted backdrop — Sade Adu caught close in on the face, one arm folded above the head, in a 1982 London sitting that predates her debut album by two full years. The portrait catches her still emerging from the London club-and-fashion scene that she would soon leave behind for the globally defining smooth-soul vocabulary the band carried through the mid-and-late 1980s: Diamond Life (1984), Promise, Stronger Than Pride, Love Deluxe. Sheila Rock's framing reads closer to a fashion portrait than to the documentary punk-era work that anchors her broader 1970s archive, matching the register of her 1980s editorial output for The Face. Original Rock portraits of Sade from the pre-Diamond Life window remain rare on the collector market — the sitting captures the moment immediately before Sade Adu became Sade the global pop-cultural figure.