Major Sickert retrospective at Walker Art Gallery this autumn

More than 300 artworks are being brought together at the Walker Art Gallery next month in a major new autumn exhibition of the life and work of Walter Richard Sickert.

Sickert: A Life in Art opens on September 18 and is the largest retrospective of his work in the UK for more than three decades.

The German-born English painter, printmaker, teacher and critic was an important figure in the Post-Impressionist movement of the early 20th Century, and became a leading influence within the London-based Camden Town Group (1911-12) who made urban modernity the subject of their art.

The paid-for exhibition will showcase some of his most iconic and controversial paintings from this period, including a series of nudes.

The Walker holds the largest collection of Sickert drawings in the world, many of them never displayed before.

Curators have drawn together around 100 loaned paintings and 200 drawings for this huge show which features examples of his paintings of London music halls, and four of the six large-scale paintings commissioned for the dining room of the Hotel de la Plage in Dieppe in 1902.

The exhibition will also explore the vital role Sickert’s third wife, artist Thérèse Lessore, played in his later paintings.

Above: Noctes Ambrosionae, Gallery Of The Old Mogul, 1906-07. Top: Saint Rémy, painted about 1910. © Jerwood Collection / Bridgeman Images

Charlotte Keenan McDonald, Lead Curator of Fine Art (British Art), at the Walker Art Gallery, said: “Walter Richard Sickert was a radical painter, who determined to capture society as he saw it – regardless of whether this ‘rawness’ offended his audiences.

“He repeatedly reinvented himself, pushing his art in new and unexpected directions. He sought to combine a technical interest in painting with his conviction that art should reflect the modern world.

“Visitors to the exhibition will experience first-hand how Sickert chronicled Britain during a period of rapid change through an outstanding and uncompromising body of work.”

Sickert was born in Munich in 1860 and moved with his family to London when he was eight. Although both his father and grandfather were artists, the young Sickert’s initial career was as an actor.

At 21 he went to the Slade, and later became a pupil of Whistler. He was also closely connected with Degas and he spent some years living in Paris and Dieppe.

He died in Somerset in 1942.

Sickert: A Life in Art is at the Walker Art Gallery from September 18 to February 27, 2022. Tickets are £12 with concessions. More details and booking on the website HERE