Walter Richard Sickert (31 May 1860 – 22 January 1942) was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the
Camden Town Group
The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists founded in 1911 and active until 1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.
History
In 1908, critic Frank ...
of
Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the mid- and late 20th century.
Sickert was a cosmopolitan and eccentric who often favoured ordinary people and urban scenes as his subjects. His work includes portraits of well-known personalities and images derived from press photographs. He is considered a prominent figure in the transition from
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
to
Modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
. Decades after his death, several researchers and theorists suspected Sickert to have been the London-based serial killer
Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in the autumn of 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer w ...
, but the theory has largely been dismissed.
Training and early career
Sickert was born in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
, Germany, on 31 May 1860, the eldest son of
Oswald Sickert, a
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
artist, and his English wife, Eleanor Louisa Henry, who was the illegitimate daughter of the astronomer
Richard Sheepshanks
Richard Sheepshanks (30 July 1794, in Leeds – 4 August 1855, in Reading) was a British astronomer.
Personal life
He was born the son of Joseph Sheepshanks, a Leeds textile manufacturer of the well-to-do Sheepshank family of Bilton, Harrogate. ...
. In 1868, following the
German annexation of Schleswig-Holstein, the family settled in England,
[ where Oswald's work had been recommended by Freiherrin Rebecca von Kreusser to ]Ralph Nicholson Wornum
Ralph Nicholson Wornum (1812–1877) was a British artist, art historian and administrator. He was Keeper and Secretary of the National Gallery of London from 1855 until his death.
Early life
He was the son of Robert Wornum the pianoforte make ...
, who was Keeper of the National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...
at the time. The family eventually settled in London and obtained British nationality.[ ] The young Sickert was sent to University College School
("Slowly but surely")
, established =
, closed =
, type = Public schoolIndependent day school
, religion =
, president =
, head_label = Headmaster
, head = Mark Beard
, r_head_label =
, r_he ...
from 1870 to 1871, before transferring to King's College School
King's College School, also known as Wimbledon, KCS, King's and KCS Wimbledon, is a public school in Wimbledon, southwest London, England. The school was founded in 1829 by King George IV, as the junior department of King's College London an ...
, where he studied until the age of 18. Though he was the son and grandson of painters, he first sought a career as an actor; he appeared in small parts in Sir Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility ( ...
's company, before taking up the study of art in 1881. After less than a year's attendance at the Slade School
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...
, Sickert left to become a pupil of and etching
Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...
assistant to James Abbott McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...
. Sickert's earliest paintings were small tonal studies painted alla prima
Wet-on-wet, or ''alla prima'' (Italian, meaning ''at first attempt''), direct painting or au premier coup, is a painting technique in which layers of wet paint are applied to previously administered layers of wet paint. Used mostly in oil paint ...
from nature after Whistler's example.
In 1883 he travelled to Paris and met Edgar Degas, whose use of pictorial space and emphasis on drawing would have a powerful effect on Sickert's work. "Degas provided the counterweight to Whistler, and one which was eventually to prove the more significant for Sickert's development." He developed a personal version of Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
, favouring sombre colouration. Following Degas' advice, Sickert painted in the studio, working from drawings and memory as an escape from "the tyranny of nature".[Baron et al. 1992, p. 57.] In 1888 Sickert joined the New English Art Club
The New English Art Club (NEAC) was founded in London in 1885 as an alternative venue to the Royal Academy. It continues to hold an annual exhibition of paintings and drawings at the Mall Galleries in London, exhibiting works by both members and a ...
, a group of French-influenced realist artists. Sickert's first major works, dating from the late 1880s, were portrayals of scenes in London music halls. One of the two paintings he exhibited at the NEAC in April 1888, ''Katie Lawrence at Gatti's'', which portrayed a well known music hall singer of the era, incited controversy "more heated than any other surrounding an English painting in the late 19th century". Sickert's rendering was denounced as ugly and vulgar, and his choice of subject matter was deplored as too tawdry for art, as female performers were popularly viewed as morally akin to prostitutes. The painting announced what would be Sickert's recurring interest in sexually provocative themes.
In the late 1880s he spent much of his time in France, especially in Dieppe
Dieppe (; Norman: ''Dgieppe'') is a coastal commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France.
Dieppe is a seaport on the English Channel at the mouth of the river Arques. A regular ferry service runs to N ...
, which he first visited in mid-1885, and where his mistress, and possibly his illegitimate son, lived. During this period Sickert began writing art criticism for various publications, including Herbert Vivian and Stuart Richard Erskine's "The Whirlwind". Between 1894 and 1904 Sickert made a series of visits to Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
, initially focusing on the city's topography; it was during his last painting trip in 1903–04 that, forced indoors by inclement weather, he developed a distinctive approach to the multiple-figure tableau that he further explored on his return to Britain. The models for many of the Venetian paintings are believed to have been prostitutes, whom Sickert might have known through being a client.
Sickert's fascination with urban culture accounted for his acquisition of studios in working-class sections of London, first in Cumberland Market
Cumberland Market was a London market between Regent's Park and Euston railway station. It was built in the early 19th century and was London's hay and straw market for a hundred years until the late 1920s. An arm of the Regent's Canal was bui ...
in the 1890s, then in Camden Town in 1905. The latter location provided an event that would secure Sickert's prominence in the realist movement in Britain. On 11 September 1907, Emily Dimmock, a prostitute cheating on her partner, was murdered in her home at Agar Grove (then St Paul's Road), Camden. After sexual intercourse the man had slit her throat open while she was asleep, then left in the morning.[ The ]Camden Town murder
The Camden Town murder was a murder which took place in Camden Town, London in 1907. Robert Wood, an artist, was tried for the murder of prostitute Emily Dimmock and acquitted after a defence by Edward Marshall Hall. Januszczak, Waldemar"Wal ...
became an ongoing source of prurient sensationalism in the press.[ For several years Sickert had already been painting lugubrious female nudes on beds, and continued to do so, deliberately challenging the conventional approach to life painting—"The modern flood of representations of vacuous images dignified by the name of 'the nude' represents an artistic and intellectual bankruptcy"—giving four of them, which included a male figure, the title '']The Camden Town Murder
''The Camden Town Murder'' is a title given to a group of four paintings by Walter Sickert painted in 1908. The paintings have specific titles, such as the problem picture ''What Shall We Do for the Rent'' or ''What Shall We Do to Pay the Rent'' ...
'', and causing a controversy which ensured attention for his work.[ These paintings do not show violence, however, but a sad thoughtfulness, explained by the fact that three of them were originally exhibited with completely different titles, one more appropriately being ''What Shall We Do for the Rent?'', and the first in the series, ''Summer Afternoon''.][
While the painterly handling of the works inspired comparison to Impressionism, and the emotional tone suggested a narrative more akin to genre painting, specifically Degas's '' Interior'', the documentary realism of the ''Camden Town'' paintings was without precedent in British art. These and other works were painted in heavy ]impasto
''Impasto'' is a technique used in painting, where paint is laid on an area of the surface thickly, usually thick enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible. Paint can also be mixed right on the canvas. When dry, impasto provide ...
and narrow tonal range. Sickert's best-known work, ''Ennui'' (c. 1913), reveals his interest in Victorian narrative genres. The composition, which exists in at least five painted versions and was also made into an etching, depicts a couple in a dingy interior gazing abstractedly into empty space, as though they can no longer communicate with each other.
Just before the First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
he championed the avant-garde artists Lucien Pissarro
Lucien Pissarro (20 February 1863 – 10 July 1944) was a landscape painter, printmaker, wood engraver and designer and printer of fine books. His landscape paintings employ techniques of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, but he also exhi ...
, Jacob Epstein
Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1911.
He often produce ...
, Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarge ...
and Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited ''BLAST,'' the literary magazine of the Vorticists.
His novels include ''Tarr'' ( ...
. At the same time Sickert founded, with other artists, the Camden Town Group
The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists founded in 1911 and active until 1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.
History
In 1908, critic Frank ...
of British painters, named from the district of London in which he lived. This group had been meeting informally since 1905, but was officially established in 1911. It was influenced by Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction a ...
and Expressionism, but concentrated on scenes of often drab suburban life; Sickert himself said he preferred the kitchen to the drawing room as a scene for paintings.
From 1908 to 1912, and again from 1915 to 1918, he was an influential teacher at Westminster School of Art
The Westminster School of Art was an art school in Westminster, London.
History
The Westminster School of Art was located at 18 Tufton Street, Deans Yard, Westminster, and was part of the old Royal Architectural Museum.
H. M. Bateman described ...
, where David Bomberg
David Garshen Bomberg (5 December 1890 – 19 August 1957) was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.
Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henr ...
, Wendela Boreel
Wendela Boreel (1895–1985) was a British artist noted for her gouache painting method and intaglio works. She was a student of Walter Sickert.
Training and early career
The daughter of a Dutch diplomat, Jonkheer Boreel, and an American mo ...
, Mary Godwin and John Doman Turner were among his students. He founded a private art school, Rowlandson House, in the Hampstead Road in 1910.[Baron and Sickert 2006, p. 80.] It lasted until 1914; for most of that period its co-principal and chief financial supporter was the painter Sylvia Gosse
Laura Sylvia Gosse (14 February 1881 – 6 June 1968) was an English painter and printmaker. She also ran an art school with the painter Walter Sickert.
Education and teaching
Laura Sylvia Gosse, known as Sylvia, was the youngest of three chil ...
, a former student of Sickert. He also briefly set up an art school in Manchester where his students included Harry Rutherford
Harry Rutherford (19031985) was a British painter who is regarded as one of the most important painters of the "Northern School", a group led by L. S. Lowry which depicted the post-industrial changes around North West England. He was the first ...
.
Late period
After the death of his second wife in 1920, Sickert relocated to Dieppe, where he painted scenes of casinos and café life until his return to London in 1922. In 1924, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA).
In 1926 he suffered an illness, thought to have been a minor stroke. In 1927, he abandoned his first name in favour of his middle name, and thereafter chose to be known as Richard Sickert. His style and subject matter also changed: Sickert stopped drawing, and instead painted from snapshots usually taken by his third wife, Thérèse Lessore, or from news photographs. The photographs were squared up for enlargement and transferred to canvas, with their pencil grids plainly visible in the finished paintings.
Seen by many of his contemporaries as evidence of the artist's decline, Sickert's late works are also his most forward-looking, and prefigure the practices of Chuck Close
Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very l ...
and Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary Germa ...
. Other paintings from Sickert's late period were adapted from illustrations by Victorian artists such as Georgie Bowers and John Gilbert. Sickert, separating these illustrations from their original context and painting them in poster-like colours so that the narrative and spatial intelligibility partly dissolved, called the resulting works his "English Echoes".
Sickert painted an informal portrait of Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
in about 1927. Churchill's wife Clementine
A clementine (''Citrus × clementina'') is a tangor, a citrus fruit hybrid between a willowleaf mandarin orange ( ''C.'' × ''deliciosa'') and a sweet orange (''C. × sinensis''), named in honor of Clément Rodier, a French missionary who fir ...
introduced him to Sickert, who had been a friend of her family. The two men got along so well that Churchill, whose hobby was painting, wrote to his wife that "He is really giving me a new lease of life as a painter."
Sickert tutored and mentored students of the East London Group
The East London Group were a group of artists based in London. They worked and showed together from 1928 to 1936. They were mostly working class, realist painters whose formal education had often stopped at elementary school.
The group developed f ...
, and exhibited alongside them at The Lefevre Gallery in November 1929.
Sickert made his last etching in 1929.
Sickert was President of the Royal Society of British Artists from 1928 to 1930. He became a Royal Academician (RA) in March 1934 but resigned from the Academy on 9 May 1935 in protest against the president's refusal to support the preservation of Jacob Epstein
Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1911.
He often produce ...
's sculptural reliefs on the British Medical Association building in the Strand.[Baron 1980.] In the last decade of his life, he depended increasingly on assistants, especially his wife, for the execution of his paintings.
One of Sickert's closest friends and supporters was newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook, who accumulated the largest single collection of Sickert paintings in the world. This collection, with a private correspondence between Sickert and Beaverbook, is in the Beaverbrook Art Gallery
The Beaverbrook Art Gallery is a public art gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. It is named after William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, who funded the building of the gallery and assembled the original collection. It opened i ...
in Fredericton, New Brunswick
New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...
, Canada. In addition to having painted Beaverbrook, Sickert painted portraits of notables including Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies
Dame Gwen Lucy Ffrangcon-Davies, (25 January 1891 – 27 January 1992) was a British actress and centenarian.
Early life
She was born in London of a Welsh family; the name "Ffrangcon" is said to originate from a valley in Snowdonia. Her pare ...
, Hugh Walpole
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE (13 March 18841 June 1941) was an English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among th ...
, Valentine Browne, 6th Earl of Kenmare
Valentine Edward Charles Browne, 6th Earl of Kenmare (29 May 1891 – 20 September 1943), styled Viscount Castlerosse from 1905 to 1941, was the Earl of Kenmare and the son of Valentine Browne, 5th Earl of Kenmare.
Lord Castlerosse, an Anglo-Iris ...
, and less formal depictions of Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 187216 March 1898) was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the ...
, King George V
George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.
Born during the reign of his grandmother Qu ...
, and Peggy Ashcroft
Dame Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft (22 December 1907 – 14 June 1991), known professionally as Peggy Ashcroft, was an English actress whose career spanned more than 60 years.
Born to a comfortable middle-class family, Ashcroft was deter ...
.
Sickert died in Bath, Somerset in 1942, at the age of 81. He had spent much time in the city in his later years, and many of his paintings depict Bath's varied street scenes. He had been married three times: from 1885 until their divorce in 1899 to Ellen Cobden, a daughter of Richard Cobden
Richard Cobden (3 June 1804 – 2 April 1865) was an English Radical and Liberal politician, manufacturer, and a campaigner for free trade and peace. He was associated with the Anti-Corn Law League and the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty.
As a you ...
; from 1911 until her death in 1920 to Christine Angus; and from 1926 until his death to the painter Thérèse Lessore. He is buried in the churchyard of the Church of St Nicholas, Bathampton.
Sickert's sister was Helena Swanwick
Helena Maria Lucy Swanwick CH (née Sickert; 30 January 1864 – 16 November 1939) was a British feminist and pacifist. Her autobiography, ''I Have Been Young'' (1935), gives a remarkable account of the non-militant women's suffrage campaign ...
, a feminist and pacifist
Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...
active in the women's suffrage
Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...
movement.
Style and subjects
For his earliest paintings, Sickert followed Whistler's practice of rapid, wet-in-wet execution using very fluid paint. He subsequently adopted a more deliberate procedure of painting pictures in multiple stages, and "attached a great deal of importance to what he called the 'cooking' side of painting". He preferred to paint not from nature but from drawings or, after the mid-1920s, from photographs or from popular prints by Victorian illustrators. After transferring the design to canvas by the use of a grid, Sickert made a rapid underpainting using two colours, which was allowed to dry thoroughly before the final colours were applied. He experimented tirelessly with the details of his method, always with the goal, according to his biographer Wendy Baron, of "paint ngquickly, in about two sittings, with the maximum economy and minimum of fuss".
Sickert tended to paint his subjects in series. He is identified particularly with domestic interior scenes, scenes of Venice, music hall and theatre scenes, and portraits. He painted very few still lifes. For his music hall subjects, Sickert often chose complex and ambiguous points of view, so that the spatial relationship between the audience, performer and orchestra becomes confused, as figures gesture into space and others are reflected in mirrors. The isolated rhetorical gestures of singers and actors seem to reach out to no-one in particular, and audience members are portrayed stretching and peering to see things that lie beyond the visible space. This theme of confused or failed communication between people appears frequently in his art. By emphasising the patterns of wallpaper and architectural decorations, Sickert created abstract decorative arabesque
The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements. Another definition is "Foli ...
s and flattened the three-dimensional space. His music hall pictures, like Degas' paintings of dancers and café-concert entertainers, connect the artificiality of art itself to the conventions of theatrical performance and painted backdrops.
Sickert often professed his distaste for what he termed the "beastly" character of thickly textured paint. In an article he wrote for ''The Fortnightly Review
''The Fortnightly Review'' was one of the most prominent and influential magazines in nineteenth-century England. It was founded in 1865 by Anthony Trollope, Frederic Harrison, Edward Spencer Beesly, and six others with an investment of £9,00 ...
'' in 1911, he described his reaction to the paintings of Van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...
: "I execrate his treatment of the instrument I love, these strips of metallic paint that catch the light like so many dyed straws ... my teeth are set on edge". In response to Alfred Wolmark's work he declared that "thick oil-paint is the most undecorative matter in the world".
Nonetheless, Sickert's paintings of the ''Camden Town Murder'' series of c. 1906–1909 were painted in heavy impasto and narrow tonal range, as were numerous other obese nudes in the pre-World War I period in which the fleshiness of the figures is connected to the thickness of the paint—a device that was later adapted by Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewis ...
. The influence of these paintings on successive generations of British artists has been noted in the works of Freud, David Bomberg
David Garshen Bomberg (5 December 1890 – 19 August 1957) was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.
Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henr ...
, Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
, Frank Auerbach
Frank Helmut Auerbach (born 29 April 1931) is a German-British painter. Born in Germany, he has been a naturalised British subject since 1947. He is considered one of the leading names in the School of London, with fellow artists Francis Bacon ...
, Howard Hodgkin
Sir Gordon Howard Eliott Hodgkin (6 August 1932 – 9 March 2017) was a British painter and printmaker. His work is most often associated with abstraction.
Early life
Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin was born on 6 August 1932 in Hammersmith, ...
, and Leon Kossoff.
In the 1910s and 1920s, the dark, gloomy tones of his early paintings gradually brightened,[Shone and Curtis 1988, p. 11.] and Sickert juxtaposed unexpected tones with a new boldness in works such as '' Brighton Pierrots'' (1915) and ''Portrait of Victor Lecourt'' (1921–24). His several self-portraits usually displayed an element of role-playing consistent with his early career as an actor: ''Lazarus Breaks his Fast'' (c. 1927) and ''The Domestic Bully'' (c. 1935–38) are examples. Sickert's late works display his preference for thinly scrubbed veils of paint, described by Helen Lessore as "a cool colour rapidly brushed over a warm underpainting (or vice versa) on a coarse canvas and in a restricted range allow ngthe undercoat to 'grin through'".
Sickert insisted on the importance of subject matter in art, saying that "all the greater draughtsmen tell a story", but treated his subjects in a detached manner. Max Kozloff
Max Kozloff (born 1933) is an American art historian, art critic of modern art and photographer. He has been art editor at ''The Nation'', and Executive Editor of ''Artforum''. His essay "American Painting During the Cold War" is of particular im ...
wrote: "How not to say too much seems to have become a matter of utmost laborious concern for Sickert", as evidenced by his paintings' studied lack of finish and "neurasthenic sobriety" of color. According to the painter Frank Auerbach
Frank Helmut Auerbach (born 29 April 1931) is a German-British painter. Born in Germany, he has been a naturalised British subject since 1947. He is considered one of the leading names in the School of London, with fellow artists Francis Bacon ...
, "Sickert's detachment became increasingly evident in his uninhibited procedures. He made obvious his frequent reliance on snapshots and press photographs, he copied, used and took over the work of other, dead, artists and made extensive use, also, of the services of his assistants who played a large and increasing part in the production of his work."
Jack the Ripper
Sickert took a keen interest in the crimes of Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in the autumn of 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer w ...
and believed he had lodged in a room used by the notorious serial killer
A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A
*
*
*
* with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...
. He had been told this by his landlady, who suspected a previous lodger who stayed there in 1881. Sickert did a painting of the room in 1905–1907 and titled it ''Jack the Ripper's Bedroom'' (Manchester Art Gallery
Manchester Art Gallery, formerly Manchester City Art Gallery, is a publicly owned art museum on Mosley Street in Manchester city centre. The main gallery premises were built for a learned society in 1823 and today its collection occupies three ...
). It shows a dark, melancholy room with most details obscured. It suggests his morbid interest in the subject. There is good evidence he spent most of 1888, the time of the murders, outside the UK.
Although for over 80 years there was no mention of Sickert being a suspect in the Ripper crimes, in the 1970s authors began to explore the idea that Sickert was Jack the Ripper or his accomplice.
In 1976 Stephen Knight, in his book '' Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution'', maintained that Sickert had been forced to become an accomplice in the Ripper murders. Knight's information came from Joseph Gorman, who claimed to be Sickert's illegitimate son. Gorman later admitted that his story was a hoax. From 1989 to 1998 Alan Moore
Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including '' Watchmen'', ''V for Vendetta'', '' The Ballad of Halo Jones'', ''Swamp Thing'', ''Batman:'' ''The Killing Joke'', and '' From He ...
and Eddie Campbell
Eddie Campbell (born 10 August 1955) is a British comics artist and cartoonist who now lives in Chicago. Probably best known as the illustrator and publisher of ''From Hell'' (written by Alan Moore), Campbell is also the creator of the semi-au ...
published the graphic novel ''From Hell
''From Hell'' is a graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell, originally published in serial form from 1989 to 1998. The full collection was published in 1999 by Top Shelf Productions.
Set during the Whitechapel murders of ...
'', which was based on Stephen Knight's theory. In 1990 Jean Overton Fuller, in her book ''Sickert and the Ripper Crimes'', maintained that Sickert was the killer.
In 2002 crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, in '' Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed'', maintained that Sickert was Jack the Ripper. Cornwell purchased 31 of Sickert's paintings, and some in the art world
The art world comprises everyone involved in producing, commissioning, presenting, preserving, promoting, chronicling, criticizing, buying and selling fine art. It is recognized that there are many art worlds, defined either by location or alte ...
have said that she destroyed one of them in searching for Sickert's DNA, but Cornwell denies having done this.[Gibbons, Fiachra]
"Does this painting by Walter Sickert reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper?"
''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', 8 December 2001. Retrieved 13 September 2008. Cornwell claimed that mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial D ...
from one of more than 600 Ripper letters sent to Scotland Yard and mitochondrial DNA from a letter written by Sickert belong to only one percent of the population.[Cornwell, Patricia. Otava, 2004.] In 2017, Cornwell published another book on the subject, ''Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert'', in which she uncovers what she believes to be further evidence of Sickert's guilt. In 2004 the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...
'', in its article on Sickert, dismissed any claim that he was Jack the Ripper as "fantasy". In 2005, Matthew Sturgis included a lengthy "Postscript" in his substantial biography of the artist, exploring Cornwell's and others' claims: it begins, "Walter Sickert was not Jack the Ripper".
In 2019, an article in ''Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
'', the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
, stated that Cornwell's allegation that Sickert was the Ripper was based on a DNA analysis of letters that "many experts believe ... to be fake" and that "another genetic analysis of the letters claimed the murderer could have been a woman".
File:Jack the Ripper's Bedroom.jpg, ''Jack the Ripper's Bedroom'', c. 1907
File:The Camden Town Murder, or, What Shall We Do for the Rent?.jpg, Walter Sickert, ''The Camden Town Murder
''The Camden Town Murder'' is a title given to a group of four paintings by Walter Sickert painted in 1908. The paintings have specific titles, such as the problem picture ''What Shall We Do for the Rent'' or ''What Shall We Do to Pay the Rent'' ...
'', originally titled, ''What Shall We Do for the Rent?'',[ Januszczak, Waldemar]
"Walter Sickert - murderous monster or sly self-promoter?"
''The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'', 4 November 2007. Retrieved 13 September 2008. alternatively, ''What Shall We Do to Pay the Rent'', 1908
Personal papers
Walter Sickert's personal papers are held at Islington Local History Centre. Additional papers are held at several other archives, particularly the Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
Gallery Archive. The Walker Art Gallery holds the largest collection of his drawings, a total of 348.
Retrospectives
In 2021–2022, a retrospective exhibition ''Sickert: A Life in Art'' at the Walker Art Gallery
The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group.
History of the Gallery
The Walker Art Gallery's collection ...
, Liverpool, displayed around 100 of Sickert's paintings and 200 drawings, claiming to be the largest retrospective of the artist’s work to have been held in the UK for more than 30 years. The art critic Jonathan Jones noted: "This baffling man who was born in Munich in 1860, emigrated to Britain as a child and became one of our greatest and weirdest artists, emerges in this excellent show as even odder than I thought. In that unsettling way of seeing lies his modernity."
In 2022, Tate Britain
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...
staged the first major Sickert retrospective at Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
in over 60 years, featuring over 150 of his works from over 70 public and private collections, and claiming to be the most extensive retrospective in almost 30 years. The exhibition was organised in collaboration with the Petit Palais
The Petit Palais (; en, Small Palace) is an art museum in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France.
Built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle ("universal exhibition"), it now houses the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts (''Musée des beaux-arts ...
, Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, where it is expected to be displayed between late 2022 and 2023. Jonathan Jones observed, "This hellishly brilliant exhibition takes you to a place beyond simple moral or political truth. Whatever Sickert was, he was the only British artist of his time who can be as powerful as Munch, Van Gogh or Otto Dix."
See also
* Elwin Hawthorne
Elwin Hawthorne (1905–1954) was a British painter, and part of the so-called East London Group. He was often described as an English Maurice Utrillo, Utrillo.
Hawthorne was born Elwin Hawthorn in Poplar, London, Poplar, London, in 1905. one of ...
– artist, worked for a period as Sickert's assistant
* Florence Pash – artist, ran a private art school with Sickert in the mid-1890s
References
Bibliography
*Baron Wendy (1973). ''Sickert''. London: Phaidon Press Ltd.
*Baron, Wendy (1979). ''The Camden Town Group''. London: Scolar Press.
*Baron, Wendy (September 1980). "The Perversity of Walter Sickert". ''Arts Magazine''. pp. 125–29.
*Baron, Wendy and Shone, Richard, eds. (1992). ''Sickert: Paintings: atalogue ... on the occasion of the exhibition 'Sickert: paintings', Royal Academy of Arts, London, 20 November 1992-14 February 1993 ...'. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
*Baron, Wendy (2006). ''Sickert: Paintings and Drawings''. Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
, Yale Universi ...
, 2006.
*Browse, Lillian, ed. (1943). ''Sickert'', with an essay on his life and notes on his paintings; and with an essay on his art by R.H. Wilenski. London: Faber and Faber.
* Browse, Lillian (1960). ''Sickert''. London: Rupert Hart-Davis.
*Chambers, Emma, ed. (2022). ''Walter Sickert''. Tate, accompanying a Tate Britain exhibition.
*Corbett, David Peters (2001). ''Walter Sickert''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
*Emmons, Robert (1941). ''The Life and Opinions of Walter Richard Sickert''. London: Faber and Faber, Ltd.
*Hartley, Cathy. "Gosse, (Laura) Sylvia (1881–1968)"
''A Historical Dictionary of British Women''
London and New York: Europa Publications, 2003 (rev. ed. of ''The Europa Biographical Dictionary of British Women'', 1983).
*Keenan McDonald, Charlotte (2021). ''Sickert: A Life in Art''. National Museums Liverpool
National Museums Liverpool, formerly National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, comprises several museums and art galleries in and around Liverpool, England. All the museums and galleries in the group have free admission. The museum is a non ...
: Walker Art Gallery
The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group.
History of the Gallery
The Walker Art Gallery's collection ...
. Exhibition catalog.
*Lilly, Marjorie (1973). ''Sickert: The Painter and His Circle''. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press. Lilly (1891-1980) was a friend of Sickert's an
"closely associated with his circle."
*Moorby, Nicola (2012). "Walter Richard Sickert 1860–1942," artist biography, May 2006, in Helena Bonett, Ysanne Holt, Jennifer Mundy (eds.)
''The Camden Town Group in Context''
Tate
*Michael Parkin Fine Art Ltd. and The Maltzahn Gallery Ltd. (1974). ''The Sickert Women and the Sickert Girls: Walter Sickert with Therese Lessore, Sylvia Gosse, Wendela Boreel, Marjorie Lilly, Christiana Cutter: 18th April to 18th May 1974''. London: Parkin Gallery.
*Robins, Anna Gruetzner and Thomson, Richard (2005). ''Degas, Sickert, and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris, 1870-1910''. London: Tate Publishing. (Catalog for 2005-2006 Tate Britain exhibition listed below under External links)
*Robins, Anna Gruetzner
"Walter Sickert: Art Critic for the ''New Age''"
(includes links to nine of Sickert's reviews for the ''New Age'').
* Robins, Anna Gruetzner, ed. (2000), ''Walter Sickert: The Complete Writings on Art''. New York: Oxford University Press.
* Shone, Richard; Curtis, Penelope (1988). ''W. R. Sickert: Drawings and Paintings 1890–1942''. Liverpool: Tate Gallery
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
.
*Shone, Richard (1988). ''Sickert''. Oxford: Phaidon.
*Shone, Richard (2021). ''Sickert: The Theatre of Life''. Piano Nobile, 2021.
*Sickert, Walter; Hollis, Marianne, Hayward Gallery, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts & Wolverhampton Art Gallery (1981). ''Late Sickert: Paintings 1927 to 1942''. London: Arts Council of Great Britain.
*Sickert, Walter (November 1917). "Memories of Degas
Edgar Degas (, ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 183427 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings.
Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings. Degas is espec ...
," in ''The Painter of Modern Life: Memories of Degas by George Moore and Walter Sickert, with an introduction by Anna Gruetzner Robins
Anna Gruetzner Robins is a Canadian art historian who is a professor at the University of Reading. She is a specialist in the art of Walter Sickert about which she has written three books. She completed her BA at the University of Toronto and her ...
''. London: Pallas Athene, 2011.
*Sickert, Walter (21 July 1910)
"The naked and the Nude".
''New Age'', 21 July 1910, pp. 276–7, in Anna Gruetzner Robins (ed.), ''Walter Sickert: The Complete Writings on Art'', Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 261.
* Sitwell, Osbert, ed. (1947). ''A Free House! Or the Artist as Craftsman: Being the Writings of Walter Richard Sickert''. London: Macmillan & Co. (reprinted by Arcade Press, 2012, consulting editor Deborah Rosenthal.)
* Soames, Mary, ed. (1999). ''Winston and Clementine: The Personal Letters of the Churchills''. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. (pbk)
* Sturgis, Matthew (2005). ''Walter Sickert: A Life''. Comprehensive biography of Sickert – in the final chapter Sturgis refutes the notion that Sickert was Jack the Ripper, but also claims that if Sickert were still alive he would enjoy his current notoriety.
* Tickner, Lisa (2000)
"Walter Sickert: The Camden Town Murder and Tabloid Crime"
in Tickner, Lisa, ''Modern Life & Modern Subjects: British Art in the Early Twentieth Century''. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2000, pp. 11–47.
*Travers, Matthew (2021). ''Walter Sickert: The Theatre of Life''. London: Piano Nobile.
*Upstone, Robert (2008). ''Modern Painters: The Camden Town Group'', exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London, 2008
*Upstone, Robert (2009). ''Sickert in Venice'', exhibition catalogue, Dulwich Picture Gallery,
*Wilcox, T., Causey, A., Checketts, L., Peppiatt, M., Manchester City Art Gallery, Barbican Art Gallery, & Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum (1990). ''The Pursuit of the Real: British Figurative Painting from Sickert to Bacon''. London: Lund Humphries in association with Manchester City Art Galleries.
* Woolf, Virginia (1934)
"Walter Sickert: A Conversation"
Also published as "Walter Sickert" in ''The Captain's Death Bed and Other Essays'', Woolf, Leonard, ed., London: Hogarth Press
The Hogarth Press is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that was founded as an independent company in 1917 by British authors Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond (then in Surrey and n ...
, 1950. . First American edition published by Harcourt, Brace and Company
Harcourt () was an American publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. The company was last based in San Diego, California, with editorial/sales/marketing/rights offices in New York City an ...
, New York, 1950.
*Wright, Barnaby
"Walter Sickert: 'The naked and the Nude'"
(about Sickert's article of that name listed above).
External links
*
Tate biography and gallery
TATE BRITAIN EXHIBITION: WALTER SICKERT, 28 April – 18 September 2022Crewe, Tom, "Real Busters"
TATE BRITAIN EXHIBITION: DEGAS, SICKERT AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, LONDON AND PARIS 1870–1910. 5 OCTOBER 2005 – 15 JANUARY 2006
At The Phillips Collection
The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips (art collector), Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the ...
, Washington, D.C. 18 February — 14 May 2006.
Sickert: A Life in Art, 18 Sep 2021—27 Feb 2022, Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool.
"Post-Impressionists"
Walter Sickert's review in The Fortnightly Review
''The Fortnightly Review'' was one of the most prominent and influential magazines in nineteenth-century England. It was founded in 1865 by Anthony Trollope, Frederic Harrison, Edward Spencer Beesly, and six others with an investment of £9,00 ...
of the "Manet
A wireless ad hoc network (WANET) or mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a decentralized type of wireless network. The network is ad hoc because it does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure, such as routers in wired networks or access points ...
and the Post-Impressionists
Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction aga ...
" exhibition at the Grafton Galleries
The Grafton Galleries, often referred to as the Grafton Gallery, was an art gallery in Mayfair, London. The French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel showed the first major exhibition in Britain of Impressionist paintings there in 1905. Roger Fry' ...
, 1910.
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sickert, Walter
1860 births
1942 deaths
English printmakers
19th-century English painters
English male painters
20th-century English painters
British Impressionist painters
St Ives artists
Jack the Ripper
People educated at University College School
People educated at King's College School, London
People of the Victorian era
Royal Academicians
German emigrants to England
Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
Members of the Royal Society of British Artists