Howard Jacobson TV - James Fox TV - Tim Marlow TV - Tate online - Waldemar Januszczak TV - Andrew Graham-Dixon TV -
The Edwardian painter Walter Sickert relocated sex to the actual unmade bedsits of Camden Town. Howard Jacobson, The Genius of British Art: Flesh, Channel 4 2010
The Camden Town Murder ... One painter dared to shock the whole country and paint it: Mornington Crescent Nude. That painter was Walter Sickert ... The twisted neck ... The killer is still in the room ... You are the person in the room. You are the client. You are the killer. And this painting is your viewpoint of a crime you have just committed. You arrive at this painting innocent and you leave it guilty. Dr James Fox, British Masters, BBC 2011
For Sickert the entire Edwardian elite stood guilty; guilty of neglecting the poverty and violence that simmered in Britain’s streets. But Sickert had one young devotee who wanted to go even further; he didn’t just want to accuse Edwardian society, he planned to overthrow it ... Percy Wyndham Lewis ... He was not a nice man. (Artists: Sickert & Artists: Lewis) ibid.
Sickert: La Hollandaise c.1906: The Camden Town nudes are a real revelation. Tim Marlow Meets Michael Palin, Michael
There is a feeling of anxiety in this work. ibid. Tim
No drawings were included in the 2008 Tate Britain exhibition, Modern Painters: The Camden Town Group. In that respect it almost precisely mirrored the three exhibitions of the original Camden Town Group, which took place in 1911 and 1912. However, the Tate exhibition catalogue refers to the existence of preparatory studies for the majority of the paintings in the 2008 exhibition, confirming the importance of drawing in the practice of Walter Sickert and other members of the group. This brief study outlines how Sickert used drawings as essential tools towards the creation of his paintings. It also cites examples of how progressive members of the Camden Town Group both adopted his process and adapted it significantly to form a more consciously modern style. Alistair Smith, Tate online
1901: The two biggest artists on the scene couldn’t be more different. This one here – he’s an American with fast hands – John Singer Sargent, a bearded smoothie who specializes in dashing portraits of the rich and famous. This other one – he’s more of a crumpled plodder – Walter Sickert – another foreigner born in Germany. Waldemar Januszczak, Sickert vs Sargent, BBC 2007
Sickert like light that was urban and grubby as if it had been trampled on in the streets. ibid.
Sargent’s folk were from Philadelphia, came over to Europe and pottered about elegantly. ibid.
Sargent was so good so quickly that he never really had a student’s era. He was making striking art from the start. ibid.
Sickert disappeared into Whistler’s possessive orbit for nearly a decade. It took him so long to find himself. ibid.
The commissions dried up in Paris so he [Sargent] moved to London. ibid.
Sickert was a North London man, Camden Town, Mornington Crescent, and those in-between bits of the smoke around King’s Cross … Sickert had this weird compulsion to keep moving. ibid.
‘Sickert shows us a world that is drab, dirty, disillusioned, whose pleasures are mirthless, a world in fact such as we know.’ ibid. William Rothenstein, friend of Sickert
Sargent liked the theatre, the opera, and that quintessential Edwardian night out, ‘the at home’. ibid.
His [Sickert] entertainment of choice was the music hall. ibid.
Music Hall: Sickert was its first and best chronicler. ibid.
He was a voyeur staring at the voyeurs. ibid.
Walter Richard Sickert had once been an actor on the Lyceum stage. Although by 1915 he’d become Britain’s most famous painter. Andrew Graham-Dixon, British Art at War: Bomberg, Sickert & Nash II: Walter Sickert & the Theatre of War, Sky Arts 2014
His art too was in perpetual transformation. Dazzlingly original, deeply unsettling, poised on the brink of violence. Proof that Sickert’s the godfather of modern British art. ibid.
Sickert’s only crime was the tell the truth about the times he lived in, notably the absurd tragedy of World War I. ibid.
He abandoned his art school education and became Whistler’s apprentice. ibid.
In 1895 he sailed for the continent … Sickert’s Venice is unlike any other. ibid.
The Camden Town nudes that laid bare the underbelly of British life. ibid.
Sickert in his 40s was the oldest enfant terrible on the block. ibid.
The artist’s early war picures are monumental in scale, deliberate fragments of the theatre of war. ibid.
The final phase of his work would be marked by bold experimentation. ibid.
Throughout the 30s Sickert produced a series of pictures that seemed to yearn for an England long gone. ibid.