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Walter Sickert: A Life
The first major life of the outstanding English painter – and Jack the Ripper suspect – Walter Sickert (1860 - 1942), by the highly acclaimed biographer of Aubrey Beardsley.
Walter Richard Sickert is perhaps the outstanding figure of British art during the last hundred years. Many contemporary painters, from Hodgkin and Bacon to Auerbach and Kossof, acknowledge a debt to his influence. His career spanned six decades of unceasing experiment and achievement. As a young artist, he was welcomed and encouraged by Degas. He was the disciple of Whistler and mentor of Beardsley. He founded the London Impressionists and the Camden Town Group. He was taken up by both the Woolfs and the Sitwells. He gave painting lessons to Winston Churchill.
His energy was prodigious and his personality fascinating: he was also an illustrator, cartoonist, writer, polemicist, teacher and wit. He relished controversy: his early paintings of London music halls and his late works, based on 18th-century etchings and contemporary news photographs, provoked outraged criticism from conventional commentators.
Sturgis also devotes an appendix to charting in detail Sickert's posthumous life as a player in the 'Jack the Ripper' circus, assessing (and demolishing) the arguments of Patricia Cornwell and others in the light of his own discoveries.
Walter Richard Sickert is perhaps the outstanding figure of British art during the last hundred years. Many contemporary painters, from Hodgkin and Bacon to Auerbach and Kossof, acknowledge a debt to his influence. His career spanned six decades of unceasing experiment and achievement. As a young artist, he was welcomed and encouraged by Degas. He was the disciple of Whistler and mentor of Beardsley. He founded the London Impressionists and the Camden Town Group. He was taken up by both the Woolfs and the Sitwells. He gave painting lessons to Winston Churchill.
His energy was prodigious and his personality fascinating: he was also an illustrator, cartoonist, writer, polemicist, teacher and wit. He relished controversy: his early paintings of London music halls and his late works, based on 18th-century etchings and contemporary news photographs, provoked outraged criticism from conventional commentators.
Sturgis also devotes an appendix to charting in detail Sickert's posthumous life as a player in the 'Jack the Ripper' circus, assessing (and demolishing) the arguments of Patricia Cornwell and others in the light of his own discoveries.
784 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 19, 2014
Excellent and thoughtful biography of an artist now inextricably linked to Jack the Ripper as a result of Patricia Cornwell's attempt to pin the crime on him. The research is meticulous and Sturgis is very clear that Sickert wasn't the Ripper.
Sickert on the contrary, liked women and women clearly liked him. He was charming and certainly not faithful to his first wife. They nevertheless remained friends after their divorce and she continued to support him financially. During one of his many stays in France he became friendly with various members of the Hozier family. Clementine Hozier, at that time in her early teens was tremendously fond of him and stayed friends with him until his death. Sickert even gave her husband, Winston Churchill, painting lessons. I seem to recall that Clementine Churchill was generally a pretty good judge of character. Sickert knew and was friendly with many other significant figures; Augustus John, Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, Whistler (although they fell out), Degas, Oscar Wilde, Cecil Beaton, to name but a few. Sickert could be tempramental and was certainly selfish, but not a mass murderer. Sturgis shows he was in France for the first two murders.
This is a good biography and covers a period that has always interested me. His interactions with other artists is fascinating. It's a shame that Sickert will always be remembered as someone linked to the Ripper crimes rather than an interesting English artist in the impressionist tradition; or at least an English version of it.
One final point; I'm the first person to review/read this on Goodreads; Cornwell's book has been read by thousands. need I say more!
Sickert on the contrary, liked women and women clearly liked him. He was charming and certainly not faithful to his first wife. They nevertheless remained friends after their divorce and she continued to support him financially. During one of his many stays in France he became friendly with various members of the Hozier family. Clementine Hozier, at that time in her early teens was tremendously fond of him and stayed friends with him until his death. Sickert even gave her husband, Winston Churchill, painting lessons. I seem to recall that Clementine Churchill was generally a pretty good judge of character. Sickert knew and was friendly with many other significant figures; Augustus John, Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, Whistler (although they fell out), Degas, Oscar Wilde, Cecil Beaton, to name but a few. Sickert could be tempramental and was certainly selfish, but not a mass murderer. Sturgis shows he was in France for the first two murders.
This is a good biography and covers a period that has always interested me. His interactions with other artists is fascinating. It's a shame that Sickert will always be remembered as someone linked to the Ripper crimes rather than an interesting English artist in the impressionist tradition; or at least an English version of it.
One final point; I'm the first person to review/read this on Goodreads; Cornwell's book has been read by thousands. need I say more!
March 23, 2022
I liked this very much, even though I got it from the library and had to skip around quite a bit before the due date. Well-wriiten and very deeply researched; luckily Mr. Sickert left a great deal of his life behind in the form of not only paintings, but letters, friendships, relatives and reminiscences. The author even spent the last chapter debunking him as a Ripper suspect, especially the risible work of Patricia Cornwell. Sickert himself quipped: "It is said that we are a great literary nation but we don't really care about literature...We like a good murder." Sickert, always intrigued by the Ripper case and a TC man through and through, would have been so flattered to be called a suspect. I hope that, wherever he is now, he knows about that.
November 29, 2015
Very readable biography of an under rated painter. Anyone who thinks this man was Jack the Ripper is deluded, but many do. He will never be really popular because his style is so dark.
August 17, 2022
Sadly, this is the text-only version of Sturgis’ biography of the renowned British painter, Walter Sickert … an illustrated edition would be amazing, but exorbitantly expensive … Sickert, born in Munich, was a gifted actor, artist, teacher, and man-about-town; he is famous for his renderings of turn-of-the-century music halls, Camden Town interiors, and landscapes of France and Venice … comprehensive, with an excellent Bibliography …
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Walter SickertOctober 31, 2022
Walter Sickert (1860 - 1942) was an outstanding and influential figure in modern British painting, his career spanning six decades. As a young painter he was encouraged by both Degas in France and Whistler in England. He founded the London Impressionists and the Camden Town Group, was frien s with the Bloomsbury group, mentored Beardsley and gave painting lessons to Winston Churchill. He was an illustrator, writer and teacher, with a passion for controversy and for living life to the fullest. Having started life as an actor, he had a passion for adopting varied personas and costumes and loved nothing better than a rapt audience. This book is extremely detailed and includes an appendix intelligently refuting the idea, espoused by writers such as Patricia Cornwell, that Sickert was Jack the Ripper.
March 1, 2022
A comprehensive and thoroughly researched biography. The discounting of the Ripper theory is rather too strident. It does however confirm the risks of reading the biography of admired artists and other celebrities. For all Sickert's qualities as a painter his fecklessness, selfishness and many other flaws render him a far less likeable character than I had hitherto imagined.
January 15, 2025
Very readable and lively, but disappointingly does little to connect the artist’s life to the work he produced and the evolution of his artistic practice. The author claims he did not intend to do this, and that he was interested more in Sickert the man than the artist - but this seems a limitation to me. Nonetheless: well researched, definitive, and often fun.
September 4, 2022
The definitive biography of a strange and mercurial man. Superb.
January 3, 2017
Intelligent and comprehensive biography of Sickert's life and art. Hugely enjoyable.
December 5, 2017
love it,have the book also completed. crafted writing,so informative. Was he the Ripper???
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews