Walter Richard Sickert

Walter Richard Sickert 1860-1942, English painter. After a brief career on the stage Sickert was apprenticed to Whistler and later worked with Degas. His preferred subjects were scenes of music halls and the London demimonde. Painting in deep, rich browns with vital, immediate brushwork, Sickert became celebrated for his personal and spontaneous works. He was a major link between French and English painting at the turn of the century.

Bibliography: See his posthumously published writings, A Free House (1947); studies by W. Baron (1973) and M. Lilly (1973).

Sickert, Walter Richard (1860–1942). British artist. Born in Munich, Sickert's Danish/Irish parents came to England in 1868. After a short career as an actor, he studied at the Slade School before joining the studio of Whistler through whom he met Degas, who became a close friend.

Sickert, Walter Richard (1860–1942) English painter. Sickert attracted a circle of progressive painters to his studio, and inspired them to form the Camden Town Group and later the London Group. He was a precursor of the 1950s ‘kitchen sink’ school of drama in his rejection of ‘nice’ subjects in favour of drab domestic interiors, sordid bedroom scenes, and a spirit of desperate boredom, as in Ennui (c.1914).

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