Enjoying retirement
In The Red Rose County
We had never visited the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, here shown in its stately setting amongst one of the most remarkable groups of public buildings anywhere in the world. Truly awe-inspiring, and all visible on exiting Lime Street station. An astonishing exterior view from a station almost akin to coming out of the station at Venice - almost but not quite! We had come to see the Sickert exhibition, but early arrival gave us chance to have a coffee and cake in the excellent cafe, and have a brief visit to the inspiring decorative art section next to the cafe. Here a cabinet by Liverpool furniture maker Hugh Miller. Here 'chair number 7' part of ‘The Coffee Ceremony’ collection by Hugh Miller. The piece, made in solid British elm, with details in brass and Japanese bamboo, takes inspiration from Japanese design principles, as well as Western cabinetry techniques. Here the coffee cart......... This huge earthenware Davenport jug was an astonishing 'coup de theatre'......... We just had time for a quick glimpse of the sculpture collection, the room so reminiscent of the British Museum..... Sickert was unusual in so many ways. And having read Patricia Cornwell's forensic investigation of whether he was actually Jack The Ripper (and been half convinced) I was fascinated to see the complete range of his painting. He first became well-known for his Variety Theatre paintings, sometimes painting the artistes - here Minnie Cunningham..... But he soon came to concentrate on the audience themselves, the onlookers, the voyeurs...... ....and architectural details...... Painting on fans became very popular in Victorian times...Sickert was not slow to follow trends. During a visit Walter Sickert made to Venice between the autumn of 1903 and the summer of 1904, he worked hard and it was an important time of development in which he evolved new ideas concerning pairs of figures in interiors.1 In Venice, Sickert led an extremely ordered existence, writing to his friend and patron Mrs Hulton on 1 January 1904 that he painted, ‘models from 9 to 11 and 1 to 4, and when the weather is fine a landscape or so’. He went on to explain that he got most of his sitters from the restaurant where he usually took his meals, the Giorgione di San Silvestro, run by Signor de Rossi seen below. Often Sickert worked extremely quickly, and this can be seen in the flowing paintwork and, as here, the grids of red lines giving a base for his works. Dieppe was important to Sickert and indeed he lived here for a period. These pictures are part of a series of six large Dieppe subjects that were commissioned by M. Mantren, the proprietor of the Hôtel de la Plage (later Metropole) to decorate his hotel restaurant. Mantren disliked the pictures so much that rather than installing them he sold four of them as soon as he could! Shop fronts always fascinated him...... As we got deeper into the exhibition it became clear how significant the exhibition was, with paintings assembled from many collections....and of course including The Walker Art Gallery's own. The Gallery has the largest collection of Sickert drawings in the world, with 348 sketches, plus 12 prints and a copper etching plate. The collection demonstrates the varied, vital role drawing played in Sickert’s practice. The drawings range from on-the-spot sketches made to capture a particular pose or detail, to final studies for paintings, and drawings made as artworks in their own right. The drawings are typically small, sometimes on lined paper from exercise and ledger books. "Before training as an artist Sickert had a brief career as an actor. Throughout his life he enjoyed playing different roles, sometimes radically altering his appearance by shaving his head or growing a bushy beard. In his self portraits Sickert is often acting a part: the glasses worn here (below) are a prop, giving him a vulnerable air despite the sharp eye behind. This painting was once simply called The Man in the Bowler Hat. Sickert described it as a 'punching ball', a searching self-examination of his middle-aged self. He later renamed it The Juvenile Lead referring to his past on the stage and his present situation as a successful and influential painter." Southampton Art Gallery. In the Tate's 'Ennui', one of several versions of this subject, "Sickert suggests the strained relationship between the figures by their lack of communication. Despite being close together, the man and woman face in opposite directions, staring off into space. They appear almost trapped in their surroundings. The furnishings reinforce the theme, in particular the bell jar containing stuffed birds, suggesting a suffocating environment. Sickert’s works give us no moral or narrative certainty. He leaves it up to us to interpret the image." The video half way through the exhibition was instructive, although with a very weak attempt to clear Sickert's name as Jack the Ripper. We then came to Sickert's nudes. The Guardian critic was interesting in this respect. "The painting to which Sickert gave the title Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom.........portrays the artist’s own flat. Venetian blinds let in a weak ghost of daylight that animates a pink bedcover, as if the bed is haunted by a memory of flesh. Creamy pigment suggests flayed skin.The painting dates from 1905–7. Sickert said his landlady told him that in 1881 she had let the room to a man she reckoned was the Ripper. But this bit of urban folklore scarcely explains the painting. Without going into the realms of conspiracy theory, the spooky, sensual way he paints the room confesses at the very least that Sickert had a morbid, oddly personal interest in the crimes.At the time when Sickert painted Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom he was beginning to paint women naked in cheap London rooms. The criminal edge continued. In 1907 Emily Dimmock was murdered, apparently by a client, in Camden Town. Sickert had recently moved into the area and in 1908 started painting nudes that explicitly allude to this crime. The Camden Town Murder, or What Shall We Do to Pay the Rent? shows a man sitting next to a woman’s possibly lifeless body. The artist himself is queasily comparing voyeurism and violence, painting and murder." "Other nudes painted by Sickert in Camden bedrooms are equally uneasy. Mornington Crescent Nude from 1907 lets us look through an open door at a woman waiting on a bed. We see her breasts and hips in the light filtered by a blind – but her face is obscure, her expression unreadable. La Hollandaise, painted in 1906, has her legs towards us, her breasts on show, but again her face is lost – in fact there is a black hole where her nose should be. As in a skull. The Walker’s terrific exhibition goes to the jugular of Sickert’s tense and stressful art – the mad nocturnal crowds and troubling nudes. To understand him you have to see him not in the genteel drawing room of Victorian and Edwardian British art, but the wider realities of his time. His Viennese contemporary Sigmund Freud saw civilisation as a thin veil over the sexual desires and obsessions that drive humanity. Sickert’s paintings of music halls assert something similar. His nudes explore his own psyche. He does this not just to shock but to free art from dishonesty. These are not polite paintings, they are sleazy confessions. The modernism of Walter Sickert is not pretty. But it is life." Sickert in a lecture is quoted as saying 'Murder is as good a subject as any other', but is it? How many 'macabre murder' painters do we know? Moving on I found the portrait study 'Baccarat' and its accompanying notes and sketches very interesting. Even more indication of Sickert as voyeur. The exhibition also showed paintings by Sickert's circle which is always instructive. The painting of Victoria and her grandson showed another Sickert technique...copying photos from newspapers. Later paintings of Bath were at once nostalgic and pessimistic. All in all a tremendous exhibition which certainly justified the two and a half hours each way train journey. Briefly flipping through other galleries I was delighted to see one of the winners of Portrait Artist of the Year represented with this portrait of Kim Cattrall. and I particularly liked this by William Holman Hunt...it has great character. The social reformer Josephine Butler was well sculpted..... and good to see at last 'When Did You Last See Your Father?'. Weren't the Victorians a sentimental bunch! Some great seascapes.... ....including these two Lowry's..... and although we have missed the Laura Knight exhibition in Milton Keynes, good to see her represented.....a beautiful picture of the view from her window. A modern take on 'willow pattern' was interesting.... I think the last painting we saw was this Lucien Freud..... All in all a great exhibition and a wonderful gallery. I wish Manchester had something half as good.
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