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.
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