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| The P.S. Wings in the O.P. Mirror ca 1888/9 (Beaux Arts, Rouen) |
Artist Walter Sickert plunges us into the world of music hall and theatre in late 19th century London. The Petit Palais has chosen perfect background colours for Sickert's paintings and suitable music hall songs to add to the atmosphere. (It's good to have a 'sing-a-long!) Sickert's first, short-lived, career was as an actor. The theatre is a favourite theme of his. His compositions are often complex, as here. The spectators are seen from the side and the performing artist is seen reflected in a mirror.
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Gallery of the Old Bedford 1894-95 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool)
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A play of mirrors in the above work challenges the 2-dimensional surface of the painting, adding drama and depth. Sickert takes us from the London to the Paris theatres:
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| Montmartre Theatre ca 1906 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) |
Sickert gradually focusses on the audience rather than the performers, blurring their faces. His tones are earthy with the odd flash of bright colour. He brings out the artifice of the theatre with its gold and red decor.
The secondary title of this Exhibition is 'Sickert- Painting and transgressing''. Music hall scenes were a scandalously modern subject. Portraying the working classes realistically, as he does, was also unconventional in Victorian Britain. Such subjects made him notorious, if not rich.
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| Blackbird of Paradise ca 1892 (Leeds Museums) |
Singer or prostitute? Sickert often transgresses in his choice of subject matter. This striking portrait is brushed with bold strokes. She may have been the type of person targeted by Jack the Ripper.. It is not surprising that an American author a few years ago suspected Sickert of being the Ripper himself!
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| Walter Sickert by George Charles Beresford 1911 (National Portrait Gallery, London) |
Born in Munich 1860, Walter Richard Sickert was already a cosmopolitan; his mother was Anglo-Irish and his father a painter and illustrator of Danish origin. After studying in a London art school and in the studio of James McNeill Whistler, Sickert lived in Paris, Dieppe and Venice.
Sickert made friends with fellow artist Jacques-Emile Blanche:
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Jacques-Emile Blanche ca 1910 (Tate Gallery, London)
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It was in Blanche's house in Dieppe that Sickert became acquainted with artists such as Degas, Monet and Pissarro.
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| L'Hôtel Royal, Dieppe ca 1894 (Sheffield Museums) |
Sickert's striking violet sky contrasts with the pale blue/green facade of the hotel, a famous attraction of Dieppe. Sickert slickly creates the figures of the woman and girl in just a few strokes of his brush:
Whistler influenced Sickert's tonal harmonies and his choice of subject matter such as street scenes. Degas strongly influenced Sickert's compositions and subject matter later. The exhibition includes works by both his mentors:
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Whistler: The Bathing Posts, Brittany 1893 (The Hunterian Museum, Glasgow)
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Whereas Whistler keeps the interest on the colour harmonies of the sea, with just a suggestion of life in the sails on the horizon, Sickert adds human presence in the bathing huts and figures at the base:
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| Bathing Season, Dieppe 1885 (Brooklyn Museum) |
A Degas nude in pastel illustrates the kind of work which influenced Sickert. The two artists became friends during the period spent in Dieppe in the 1890s.
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| Edgar Degas: After the Bath, reclining nude 1855-1890 pastel |
(David and Ezra Nahmad Collection)
Degas (26 years older than Sickert) told his friend that he wanted to 'look through the keyhole'. Sickert's nudes capture this same effect. The model's intimacy is invaded by the spectator.
Sickert produced many paintings of nudes, in realist, even sordid situations, defying convention:
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| The Studio: the Painting of a Nude ca 1906 (Private Collection) |
The composition of this work is sophisticated and bold - the model is seen more clearly from the back, reflected in a mirror, while the artist's arm forms a brutal diagonal across the front of the painting.
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| The Dutch woman ca 1906 (Tate Gallery, London) |
Murky colours, the face 'slurred', rough brushstrokes, a deforming angle and the violent lighting effect - all make this work rather disturbing. Francis Bacon (1909 -1992) later adopted a similar way of 'melting' his figures.
Like Degas, Sickert painted girls in brothels or in working class situations. The simple iron bedstead, seen in many of his works, became iconic:
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| Nude stretching: La Coiffure 1905-6 Pastel (Private Collection) |
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| Reclining Venetian woman 1903-4 (Beaux Arts, Rouen) |
This dynamic composition shows his model in an uncompromising position, with a second woman partially cut off at the top left, as if it were a photograph.
Sickert visited Venice several times and spent a year there in 1903. He painted nude models and views of Venice. Like Whistler before him, he captures its atmosphere:
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| The Lion of St Mark 1895-6 5 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) |
There is a colourful scene of bathers in Dieppe, the fashionable resort on the north coast of France where Sickert lived for several years :
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| Bathers, Dieppe ca 1902 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) |
This painting was part of a commission for the decoration of the Hotel de la Plage (see above).
With its off-centre composition, it ressembles a snapshot.
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| The façade of St Jacques 1902 (Private Collection) |
Subtle light effects and the use of complimentary colours in the purples and yellows of this view of St Jacques church in Dieppe in the evening, show Impressionist influence, but with Sickert's individual distinctive manner.
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| Victor Lecourt 1921 - 4 (Manchester Art Gallery) |
The rich colours and patterns of the background (Victor Lecourt's appartment in Dieppe) ressemble the paintings of the Nabis or the 'Intimist artists' such as Vuillard and Bonnard, with whose work Sickert was familiar. He worked for 3 years on this portrait of a Dieppe restaurant owner. It was acclaimed at the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1925. Sickert is obviously fascinated with light effects and often gives us a 'contre-jour' effect. Here I have included the golden frame which enhances the glow.
There are several self-portraits in the Exhibition:
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| Self-portrait ca 1896 (Leeds Art Gallery) |
Sickert was 36 when he painted the above self-portrait, in which he appears rather shadowy and mysterious. It was an image of himself he appears to have cultivated. At the time he was going through financial and marital problems.
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Lazarus breaks his fast ca 1927 (Private Collection)
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31 years later, Sickert painted himself 'resurrected' after a long illness. It was based on a black and white photo taken by his third and last wife Thérèse Lessore. From this period onwards, the artist liked to paint from photos rather than doing preparatory sketches. His colours are rather lurid... sickly Sickert!
A work which was admired by Virginia Woolf is "Boredom":
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| Ennui ca1914 (Tate Gallery, London) |
His models epitomise the loneliness and lack of communication sometimes experienced in marriage.
In 1911, Sickert had founded the 'Camden Town Group', uniting artists who treated modern life in post Impressionist style. Back in London permanently, from 1922 onwards, after the death of his mother, he paints a harmonious garden scene:
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The Garden of Love or Lainey's Garden ca1927-8 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge)
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'Lainey' was the nickname of his last wife, Thérèse Lassore, a former pupil and artist. She is seen working on the hedge. Sickert incorporates a band of curtain and part of the window frame, which adds depth to the composition.
Sickert returns to the urban landscapes of his early career, but with a rich variety of colour learnt from his French masters:
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| Queen's Road Station, Bayswater 1915-16 (Courtauld, London) |
The tube logo has not changed much since Sickert's days.
Forgotten in France, but renowned in England, Sickert finished his career teaching in Bathampton, a village near Bath. He was too ill to see his last retrospective exhibition in 1941 at the National Gallery in London.
In Sickert's later works, he had shocked spectators once again by reproducing photos as paintings- a modern technique which is usually associated with Andy Warhol- a final transgression which caused a bit of scandal at the time!
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| Sir Thomas Beeching conducting 1938 (New York MOMA) |
Walter Sickert. Peindre et transgresser. 14th October to 29th January, 2023
Petit Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill, 78008 Paris
Metro: Champs Elysées-Clémenceau
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