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WalterRichard Sickert

Walter Richard Sickert was an English painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group in London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the 20th century.
Sickert was a cosmopolitan and eccentric who often favoured ordinary people and urban scenes as his subjects. His oeuvre also included portraits of well-known personalities and images derived from press photographs. He is considered a prominent figure in the transition from Impressionism to Modernism.
Sickert was born in Munich, Germany on 31 May 1860, the eldest son of Oswald Sickert, a Danish-German artist, and his wife, Eleanor Louisa Henry, who was an illegitimate daughter of the British astronomer Richard Sheepshanks. In 1868, following the German annexation of Schleswig-Holstein, the family settled in Britain, where Oswald's work had been recommended by Freiherrin Rebecca von Kreusser to Ralph Nicholson Wornum, who was Keeper of the National Gallery at the time. The family obtained British nationality. The young Sickert was sent to University College School from 1870 to 1871, before transferring to King's College School, 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's company, before taking up the study of art in 1881. After less than a year's attendance at the Slade School, Sickert left to become a pupil and etching assistant to James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Sickert's earliest paintings were small tonal studies painted alla prima 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. He developed a personal version of Impressionism, favouring sombre colouration. Following Degas' advice, Sickert painted in the studio, working from drawings and memory as an escape from "the tyranny of nature". In 1888 Sickert joined the New English Art Club, 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, Sickert spent much of his time in France, especially in Dieppe, 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. Between 1894 and 1904 Sickert made a series of visits to Venice, initially focussing 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, with whom Sickert may have had sex.
Sickert's fascination with urban culture accounted for his acquisition of studios in working-class sections of London, first in Cumberland Market 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 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, 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 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.

More...

Sketch of a female figure

The Arcades of Fish shop, Dieppe

Two Women on a Sofa

Cafe of the Courts, Dieppe

Dieppe, Study No. 2, Facade of St. Jacques

St. Mark's, Venice

Sketch for `The Statue of Duquesne, Dieppe'

Pierrot and Woman Embracing

Venice, la Salute

The Piazzetta and the Old Campanile, Venice

Horses of St. Mark's, Venice

George Moore

The Little Tea Party: Nina Hamnett and Roald Kristian

Head of a Woman (The Belgian Cocotte)

The Servant of Abraham

Jacques-Emile Blanche

The Eldorado, Paris

Jacques Emile Blanche

Tipperary

The Laundry Shop

La Hollandaise

Jacques Emile Blanche

Café des Tribunaux, Dieppe

L'Armoire à Glace

The Brighton Pierrots

Interior of St Mark's, Venice

Brighton Pierrots

Baccarat - the Fur Cape

Queen Victoria and her great-grandson

The Trapeze

Chez Vernet

L'Américaine

Camden Town Portrait

Ellen Heath

The Lion of St Mark

The Idyll

The Camden Town Murder, or What Shall We Do For the Rent?

Ethel Sands Descending the Staircase at Newington

L'Armoire à Glace

Harold Gilman

Mornington Crescent Nude

Jacques-Emile Blanche

The rue Notre Dame and the Quai Duquesne, Dieppe

The Integrity of Belgium

The Laundry Shop, Dieppe, France

Suspense

The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute

Two Women on a Sofa Le Tose

Fancy Dress, Miss Beerbohm

Fred Winter

Portrait of Lady Noble

Tipperary

A Marengo

The Montmartre Theatre

La rue Pecquet, Dieppe, France

Miss Gwen Frangcon-Davies as Isabella of France

Maple Street, London

Dover, Kent

Laylock and Thunderplump

La gaieté Rochechouart

The Juvenile Lead

The Lady in the Gondola

Woman Washing her Hair

Le Quatorze Juillet

The Circus

Ennui

Head of a Woman (also known as The Belgian Cocotte)

Leslie Banks as Petruchio and Edith Evans as Katherine in 'The Taming of the Shrew'

The Sisters Lloyd

The Poet and His Muse

Juliet and the Nurse

Les arcades de la poissonerie, quai Duguesne, Dieppe, France

Woman Seated on a Bed, Dieppe

Lainey's Garden (also known as The Garden of Love)

Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford

The Glance

The Fair, Dieppe, France

Mrs Swinton

The Mantelpiece

William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook

Ennui

Gallery Box at the New Bedford Music Hall, London

Lady Martin

La gaieté Rochechouart

Claude Phillip Martin

Hotel Royal, Dieppe, France

The Camden Town Murder

The Tottenham Distillery

Fabia Drake (1904–1990), as Lady Macbeth, Stratford (from 'Macbeth')

The Juvenile Lead (Self Portrait)

Violets

Gatti's Hungerford Pallace of Varieties Second Turn of Katie Lawrence

The Mantelpiece

The Horses of St Mark's, Venice

Fabia Drake, as Lady Macbeth

Sir Hugh Walpole (1884–1941)

Dieppe Harbour, France

La scierie de Torqueville

Sir Alec Martin

Hotel de Commerce, Dieppe, France

Philip Wilson Steer

The American

Home Sweet Home

Mrs Swinton

Maurice Asselin

Chagford, Devon, across Fields

La gaieté Rochechouart

The rue Notre Dame des Champs, Paris The Entrance to Sargent's Studio

Gaieté Montparnasse, dernière galerie de gauche

Lady in Blue (also known as Lady Berwick)

Figure

Il Cannaregio, Venezia

Mrs Swinton

L'Hotel Royal, Dieppe, France

Roquefort

Portrait of Israel Zangwill

La Giuseppina Leaning against a Chaise-longue

Don Juan and Haidee

Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford

Mrs Van Beuren and Child

Sinn Féiners

Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford

Mrs Barrett

Maxton as 'Hamlet'

Cicely Hey

Lobster on a Tray

The Old Bedford Music Hall

O nuit d'amour

La Nera

The Bar Parlour

Violets

Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford

Circus Sketch

London Street, Bath

Victor Lecour

Easter

Chagford, Devon

A Dead Hare

Dieppe Harbour, France

Israel Zangwill

Girl at a Window, Little Rachel

Church of St Jacques, Dieppe

George Jacob Holyoake

Belvedere, Bath

Fred Winter

Noctes Ambrosianae, Gallery of the Old Mogul

Rue Aguado, Dieppe

Hampstead, London

Celia Brunel, Lady Noble

The Music Hall

Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford

Girl at a Looking Glass, Little Rachel

Henry Brougham

Bathing Huts, Dieppe

Wellington House Academy

Mrs Barrett

Jack Ashore

The Red Shop (The October Sun)

Miss Earhart's Arrival

Seated Nude, Paris

Mornington Crescent nude, contre-jour

Le marche aux loques

Corner of St Mark's, Venice

Les Arcades de la Poissonnerie, Dieppe

La Rue Notre Dame and the Quai Duquesne, Dieppe

Belmount and Back of Assembly Rooms

Santa Maria del Carmelo, Venice

Her Majesty's

Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford

Lansdown Crescent, Bath

Portrait of an Afghan Gentleman

The Yellow Sleeve

Girl at a Window, Little Rachel

Street Scene in Dieppe

Ennui

The Dutch

Les Arcades de la Bourse, Dieppe Les Arcades de la Bourse, Quai Henri IV, Dieppe (Titre erroné ancien. Il s'agit en fait du Quai Duquesne, et non du quai Henri IV.)

Noctes ambrosianae

Winifred Emery (1844–1921), as Rosamund, Cyril Maude (1862–1951), as Mr Watkin, and Brandon Thomas (1850–1914), as Mr Brabazon, in 'Sowing the Wind' by Sydney Grundy