by Walter Sickert, 1906, Tate
I analysed the question of who was Jack the Ripper in a blog post. Now here’s only one more piece of evidence. Sickert had written a series of letters to the police, using his macabre drawing skills. In 2002 The Tate asked a paper analyst to compare Sickert’s correspondence with some of the Ripper letters, and they matched! Now Ripperologists think the confusion was an unfortunate combination of 1] Sickert’s own brutal paintings of naked women and 2] his fascination with lurid newspaper stories.
Now to the major Tate Britain exhibition, April-Sept 2022. Sickert was an actor and showman from the start. His artist-father Oswald persuaded him of the uncertainty of an artist’s life, so the lad spent 3 years performing with Sir Henry Irving’s Stage Company, before going in 1881 to study art at the Slade School London.
Thus Sickert was an admirer of disguise, showing how his early stage career drove his changing paintings. This exhibition represented every phase of his career, starting with a small sketch from 1882, found in Islington’s Local History Centre. The work done under Whistler’s influence appeared, then Degas was influential.
Sickert, Gallery of the Old Bedford, 1894,
Nat Museums Liverpool
In the 1880s and 1890s, music halls faced moral scrutiny. Critics called them Victorian dens of vice, but Sickert often visited and painted them eg The Bedford. That early music hall work influenced his art i.e the young actor transformed the emotional glitter of life in the spotlight into the theatricality of his art.
Sickert’s early visions of music halls preserved the popular entertainment, portraying its stars, fans, architecture and atmosphere. The power of performance was seen the moment when the audience gave itself over to the performer and became lost in the songs, enthralling Sickert! See Bonnet et Claque: Ada Lundberg at the Marylebone Music Hall c1887, showed a singer in full-blown performance. But she was crowded by crazy grins, ghoulish eyes, collapsed noses.
One purpose of this exhibition was to emphasise the French influence on the artist. Sickert spent much of his time in Dieppe where he was artistically happy in the company of Degas, Courbet and Bonnard. His preoccupations were the same, whether in France or in Camden Town i.e the Impressionist task was to represent the lives of ordinary people and environments, but to make it look special.
The influence of French Impressionists on Sickert’s nudes was indecent in UK, a nation that was still loving its prudish pre-Raphaelite era. But not indecent to Degas; Sickert was reacting against the idealised nude promoted in Britain, which he saw as too polite. So he developed a more British version of French Impressionism, with more solemn colours.
Sickert ardently wanted to show the naked female without idealisation. In La Hollandaise 1906 he easily achieved his goal of showing a naked woman in poor surroundings.
The influence of French Impressionists on Sickert’s nudes was indecent in UK, a nation that was still loving its prudish pre-Raphaelite era. But not indecent to Degas; Sickert was reacting against the idealised nude promoted in Britain, which he saw as too polite. So he developed a more British version of French Impressionism, with more solemn colours.
Sickert ardently wanted to show the naked female without idealisation. In La Hollandaise 1906 he easily achieved his goal of showing a naked woman in poor surroundings.
How much of his view was inspired by newspaper coverage of current stories? Walter created Jack the Ripper’s Bed Room in 1907, in Manchester Art Gallery. Sickert was an eccentric macabre man; he often focused on shadowy interiors and lower class Victoriana. But it was the art that suggested violence against women that horrified. Sickert said he was merely showing the unglamorous nature of everyday life.
Against the dark walls of the Tate, in fierce lighting, the women were laid out. In The Camden Town Murder 1908, the despairing man sat while the nude on the iron bed turned her face away. Was she crying? Had he strangled her? Her awkwardly placed hand suggested the second.
Against the dark walls of the Tate, in fierce lighting, the women were laid out. In The Camden Town Murder 1908, the despairing man sat while the nude on the iron bed turned her face away. Was she crying? Had he strangled her? Her awkwardly placed hand suggested the second.
Sickert, Camden Town Murder, 1908
Southampton City Art Gall
In Murder in Camden Town 1909, a man stood over an inert female on a bed. She was a pink, moist form, like meat in a butcher’s window so was the male onlooker a killer enjoying his success, just as Sickert’s title suggested and just as the newspapers discussed?
Tate
I’d assumed that he couldn’t deal with women because they found him repulsive. But no, he’d married Ellen Cobden (1885-99); Christine Angus (1911-20); and artist Thérèse Lessore (1926-42). Perhaps it was about syphilis; after all, many Edwardian artists obsessed about it. Or he’d been made impotent by painful childhood operations for a penile fistula. In either theory, pain or impotency had scarred him emotionally and had left him pathologically hating women.
Sickert might have been consumed with guilt, confused about sex, angry about women. But in his music hall paintings, most of the men were ugly! The exhibition acknowledged that these were shocking images and are still shocking now. But not so shocking they couldn’t influence Lucian Freud (1922–2011).
The artist’s crime scenes and ugly nudes were, Sickert suggested, a symptom of his curiosity about his vice-filled city and not evidence of his moral depravity. Yet even those who knew him claimed that it was impossible to discover real the man behind his many faces. Contemporaries quickly identified the sordid poverty of prostitution, but in most, there was an undeniable erotic or tragic aspect. Fascinated by the murders yes, but his art told another story.
Sickert might have been consumed with guilt, confused about sex, angry about women. But in his music hall paintings, most of the men were ugly! The exhibition acknowledged that these were shocking images and are still shocking now. But not so shocking they couldn’t influence Lucian Freud (1922–2011).
The artist’s crime scenes and ugly nudes were, Sickert suggested, a symptom of his curiosity about his vice-filled city and not evidence of his moral depravity. Yet even those who knew him claimed that it was impossible to discover real the man behind his many faces. Contemporaries quickly identified the sordid poverty of prostitution, but in most, there was an undeniable erotic or tragic aspect. Fascinated by the murders yes, but his art told another story.
Portrait on a Grey Cover
National Portrait Gallery
Many thanks to Walter Sickert (Tate 2022), Pallant House Gallery Bookshop.
If your comments don't appear, post them to me at helenw@bigpond.net.au
16 comments:
Featuring over 200 images from the exhibition and a wide range of essays by scholars, as well as reflections on Sickert’s relevance and influence by a selection of contemporary painters including Kaye Donachie and Somaya Critchlow.
Walter Sickert, Tate London, April 2022
£40.00
What did the visitors think at the Tate? How did they respond to the violence and ugliness?
Pallant
I am delighted that you are examining not just Sickert himself, but who influenced Sickert and who he influenced in turn. I hope a copy comes to the National Gallery of Victoria library and the State Library of Victoria.
ExPat
I have read plenty of reviews of the Walter Sickert exhibition at the Tate Britain by galleries and newspapers, but not from ordinary visitors. Perhaps the exhibition hasn't been open for long enough, or perhaps the images are too confronting.
Wow is all I can say, and that his paintings are very good but I would think to see the real painting might lead to a mental struggle between death and art.
The name Sickert includes the word sick - and that's significant. I suppose many see his paintings of women as the product of a sick mind.
Andrew
If the Jack the Ripper had not done his brutal killings of women in 1888, or if the murders had not been in London, would we consider Sickert's art to be anti woman, cruel and death-focused. Possibly not... we probably would have seen him as talented but a bit pornographic.
Let me quote Sickert again, even though I didn't believe him. Sickert was never pornographic.. he was reacting against the idealised nude promoted in Britain, which he saw as too polite.
DUTA
not only does "Sickert" include the word "sick" in English. It means "ooze" in German. Neither concepts are very attractive.
In some way it doesn't matter that Walter suffered from syphilis, penile fistula or impotency. Or that his father Oswald, a well known artist himself, controlled his son's career against Walter's will. The end product was not a happy one.
Hi Hels - I have to say this is not an exhibition I'd visit - but appreciate you bringing it to our attention, and to the connection re the Jack the Ripper connection ... also not sure I'd known about it. An interesting write up - thank you ... Hilary
Hilary
although I would agree with you, and probably would not visit the Tate Exhibition about Walter Sickert either, I was trying to think of a gain arising from these works of art. At least for the artist, if not for the rest of us.
Assuming that Walter Sickert was a disturbed young man, was it possible that his survival (if not his recovery) was influenced by the provision of mental health "services". If art motivated a disturbed individual by providing opportunities for self-exploration and the development of his struggling self confidence, it was well worth while.
Boa tarde. Desejo um feliz domingo com muita saúde e paz, para você e sua família. Bom início de semana.
Luiz
thank you. Were you familiar with the story of Jack the Ripper, even if you weren't familiar with Walter Sickert and his art? The reason I ask is that women have been murdered by men in other countries and at other times since 1888. Yet this horrible case is still appearing in modern films, books and paintings.
I will go to the Sickert exhibition. I am an admirer of his work. He was a peculiar man and controversial and not slow to speak out on his views of other artists of the time. He was in France at many times of the Ripper murders and he is unlikely to have had anything to do with them to my knowledge. He had a melancholic view of everyday life, most of interiors were doom laden. I look forward to seeing the exhibition.
Rachel,
The doom laden quality lasted for a very long time. See if you can detect whether it was intentional (an artistic choice) or unintentional (due to his own physical and mental ill health).
I had heard that Sickert was a suspect but had never really understood why . Maybe he was truly in touch with what was a very ugly time in London History . Poverty exploitation of women and children and raging alcoholism . Maybe his own suffering primed and drove him to depict the reality of the life around him . He certainly wasn't a happy camper .Maybe painting like this was a way of him dealing with a sensitive mind which had seen too much and suffered too much .
mem
Jack the Ripper killed five women quite publicly and perhaps more women that weren't found in late 1888. Or weren't found in Whitechapel and therefore weren't linked. Whoever Jack the Ripper was, his brutality remained an infamous series of unsolved English crimes against women. Even Prince Albert Victor, Queen Victoria's grandson, was considered a very real candidate for the murderer.
But Walter Sickert did not deny any involvement in the murders... in fact he quietly supported the idea.
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