Walter Sickert(1860-1942)
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English artist. Sickert was born in Munich, the eldest son of the
Danish painter Oswald Adalbert Sickert. The family moved to London in
1868. After a short period as an actor, Sickert studied art at the
Slade School and then under James Whistler in Chelsea when, like
Whistler, he took to etching. In 1883 he met Degas in Paris, who became
the greatest influence on his style and attitude to art. Though often
described as an Impressionist, he was only so to the same limited
extent as Degas, constructing pictures from swift notes made on the
spot, and never painting in the open air. His later work became broader
in treatment and lighter in tone, a late innovation being the Echoes',
in which he freely adapted the work of Victorian illustrators. He
worked in Dieppe from 1885 to 1905, with occasional visits to Venice,
and produced music-hall paintings and views of Venice and Dieppe in
dark, rich tones. Although well known in Europe, he did not achieve
recognition in the UK until the 1920s. His writings were collected in
1947 under the title A Free House. His works, broadly Impressionist in
style, capture subtleties of tone and light, often with a melancholic
atmosphere, their most familiar subjects being the rather shabby
cityscapes and domestic and music-hall interiors of late Victorian and
Edwardian London. Ennui (about 1913; Tate Gallery, London) is a typical
interior painting. In his Camden Town' period (1905-14), he explored
the back rooms and dingy streets of North London. His zest for urban
life and his personality drew together a group of younger artists who
formed the nucleus of the Camden Town Group, which played a leading
role in bringing post-Impressionism into English art. Some of his
paintings viz. 'The Ripper's bedroom' made some Ripperologists suspect
him of being the elusive 'Jack the Ripper'. Most of this is based on
pure speculation.