Walter Sickert

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walter Sickert, 1911, photograph by George Charles Beresford

Walter Richard Sickert (born May 31, 1860 in Munich , † January 22, 1942 in Bath ) was an English painter born in Germany. He is considered an eccentric but influential figure in the transition from impressionism to modernity .

life and work

Sickert came from a family to which numerous painters had belonged. His father Oswald was Danish-German and his mother Eleanor of Anglo-Irish descent. In 1868 the family settled in England. Walter left school at the age of 17. Since his father was rather negative about painting, he first became an actor. He took on minor roles in Sir Henry Irving's Company before joining James McNeill Whistler's workshop as an assistant . Sickert was a cosmopolitan who preferred "normal" people and locations as subjects for his pictures. Degas' and Whistler's influence was evident in many music hall or theater scenes. After his first exhibition in 1884, experts called him a student of Whistler.

Sickert was married three times. In 1885 he married Ellen Cobden, the daughter of the entrepreneur and liberal politician Richard Cobden . The marriage was divorced in 1899. In 1911 he married Christine Drummond Angus, who was 18 years his junior and who died in 1920. In 1926 he married his long-time girlfriend Thérèse Lessore.

Walter Sickert: Portrait of Harold Gilman , 1911

Sickert made numerous pictures and sketches of the London music halls and their audience and also held evening courses. Much of his work has been exhibited at the New English Art Club (the counterpart to the Royal Academy ). In 1894/95 his drawings were printed in Aubrey Beardsley's famous Yellow Book .

After his divorce from Ellen Cobden, he lived in Venice , Paris and on the French Atlantic coast in Dieppe and Neuville-au-Plain . There he lived with Madame "Titine" Villain and fathered their son Maurice with her. In 1905 he returned to London and settled in Soho. He taught at the Westminster Institute . In 1907 he was a founding member of the Fitzroy Street Group with Harold Gilman and in turn founded the Camden Town Group of British painters with Gilman in 1911 . Shortly before the First World War, he campaigned for the modernists Lucien Pissarro , Jacob Epstein , Augustus John and Wyndham Lewis .

Degas had inspired him to use photographs as the basis for his pictures. In his later phase, Sickert almost exclusively used photographs and post-processing of Victorian pictures. He also wrote and taught a lot. In 1924 Sickert became a member of the Royal Academy . In 1941 he was honored with a major solo exhibition at the National Gallery . The following year he died in Bath. One of Sickert's best friends and supporters was the newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook , who brought together the largest individual collection of Sickert's works. This collection together with the private correspondence between Sickert and Beaverbrook is located in Canada, in the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton , New Brunswick .

Sickert was also acquainted with the painter Charles Isaac Ginner .

family

Sickert was the grandson of Johann Jürgen Sickert and the older brother of Bernhard Sickert . His sister Helena Swanwick became a feminist and pacifist and was active in the suffragette movement.

Sickert and the Jack-the-Ripper theories

Jack the Ripper's Bedroom
Walter Sickert: The Camden Town Murder or What Shall We Do for the Rent? , 1908

In the theories about the identity of the serial killer Jack the Ripper , the name Sickerts has been mentioned several times (see literature list), for the first time in 1976 by Stephen Knight, and in 2002 by Patricia Cornwell . However, the various claims are rejected by most professionals.

literature

  • Ruth Bromberg (Ed.): Walter Sickert prints. A catalog raisonné. Yale University Press, New Haven CT 2000, ISBN 0-3000-8161-8 .
  • David P. Corbett: Walter Sickert. Biography. Tate Gallery, London 2001, ISBN 1-85437-308-0 .
  • Patricia Cornwell: Portrait of a Killer. Jack the Ripper Case Closed. Berkley Books, New York NY 2003, ISBN 0-425-19273-3 ( Berkley True Crime ).
  • Patricia D. Cornwell: Who Was Jack the Ripper? Portrait of a killer. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-455-09365-5 .
  • Robert Emmons: Life and Opinions of Walter Richard Sickert. Lund Humphries, London 1992, ISBN 0-85331-635-X .
  • Jean Overton Fuller : Sickert and the Ripper crimes. An investigation into the relationship between the Whitechapel murders of 1888 and the English tonal painter Walter Richard Sickert. Mandrake, Oxford 1990, ISBN 1-86992-815-6 .
  • Stephen Knight: Jack the Ripper, the final solution. Treasure books, London 1986, ISBN 1-850510-14-8 .
  • Hendrik Püstow, Thomas Schachner: Jack the Ripper. Anatomy of a legend. Militzke Verlag, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 3-86189-753-9 .
  • Matthew Sturgis: Walter Sickert. A life. Harper Collins, London 2005, ISBN 0-007205-27-9 .

Web links

Commons : Walter Sickert  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

painter

Posts on suspicion regarding Jack the Ripper

personal data
SURNAME Sickert, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sickert, Walter Richard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 1942
Place of death Bath