Walter Sickert

Walter Sickert (1860-1942) was a leading figure in the development of British painting and the graphic arts. Influenced by Whistler and Degas early in his career, by 1914 he was respected as a major figure within the Camden Town Group and a renowned painter in his own right. Yet Sickert's life and art were never stable, and he was never complacent. His work varies strikingly--from a strongly worked paint surface laden with impasto to the thinnest and sparest application; from an overtly modern set of subjects to apparently nostalgic images. But whatever form his art took, Sickert always remained what he was so often called in the 1910 "a painter's painter."

This study examines the dynamism of Sickert's work from his earliest career at the Slade School of Art to his last works. It argues for Sickert as a major figure in the history of attempts to record modern life and to develop a distinctly modern mode of painting.