Editing Walter Sickert (section)

==Training and early career==
Sickert was born in [[Munich]], [[Kingdom of Bavaria]], on 31 May 1860, the eldest son of [[Oswald Sickert]], a [[Denmark|Danish]] artist, and his English wife, Eleanor Louisa Henry, who was the illegitimate daughter of the astronomer [[Richard Sheepshanks]].<ref>Baron et al. 1992, p. 33.</ref> In 1868, following the [[History of Schleswig-Holstein|German annexation of Schleswig-Holstein]], the family settled in England,<ref name=Benezit/> where Oswald's work had been recommended by Freiherrin Rebecca von Kreusser to [[Ralph Nicholson Wornum]], who was Keeper of the [[National Gallery (London)|National Gallery]] at the time.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=7&CATID=-4126413&j=1 |title=British National Archives |publisher=Government of the United Kingdom |access-date=19 January 2014}}</ref> The family eventually settled in London and obtained British nationality.<ref name=Benezit>{{cite web |title=SICKERT, Walter Richard |url=http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/benezit/B00169092?q=Walter+Sickert&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1 |website=[[Benezit Dictionary of Artists]]}} {{small|{{subscription or membership required}}}}</ref>

The young Sickert was sent to [[University College School]] from 1870 to 1871, before transferring to [[King's College School]], where he studied until the age of 18. Though he was the son and grandson of painters, he first sought a career as an actor; he appeared in small parts in Sir [[Henry Irving]]'s company, before taking up the study of art in 1881. After less than a year's attendance at the [[Slade School]], Sickert left to become a pupil of and [[etching]] assistant to [[James Abbott McNeill Whistler]].<ref>Baron et al. 1992, p. 34.</ref> Sickert's earliest paintings were small tonal studies painted [[alla prima]] from nature after Whistler's example.<ref name="BaronShone57"/>

[[Image:Walter Sickert 1884 denoised.jpg|thumb|upright|Portrait of Sickert in 1884|left]]
In 1883 he travelled to Paris and met [[Edgar Degas]], whose use of pictorial space and emphasis on drawing would have a powerful effect on Sickert's work.<ref name="BaronShone57"/> "Degas provided the counterweight to Whistler, and one which was eventually to prove the more significant for Sickert's development."<ref>Corbett, David Peters, ''Walter Sickert'', p. 13.</ref> He developed a personal version of [[Impressionism]], favouring sombre colouration. Following Degas' advice, Sickert painted in the studio, working from drawings and memory as an escape from "the tyranny of nature".<ref name="BaronShone57">Baron et al. 1992, p. 57.</ref> In 1888 Sickert joined the [[New English Art Club]], a group of [[French art|French]]-influenced [[realism (arts)|realist]] artists. Sickert's first major works, dating from the late 1880s, were portrayals of scenes in London [[music hall]]s.<ref>Baron et al. 1992, pp. 35, 57.</ref> One of the two paintings he exhibited at the NEAC in April 1888, ''Katie Lawrence at Gatti's'', which portrayed a well known music hall singer of the era, incited controversy "more heated than any other surrounding an English painting in the late 19th century".<ref>Baron et al. 1992, pp. 15–17.</ref> Sickert's rendering was denounced as ugly and vulgar, and his choice of subject matter was deplored as too tawdry for art, as female performers were popularly viewed as morally akin to prostitutes.<ref>Baron et al. 1992, p. 15.</ref> The painting announced what would be Sickert's recurring interest in sexually provocative themes.

In the late 1880s he spent much of his time in France, especially in [[Dieppe, Seine-Maritime|Dieppe]], which he first visited in mid-1885, and where his mistress, and possibly his illegitimate son, lived. During this period Sickert began writing art criticism for various publications, including [[Herbert Vivian]] and [[Ruaraidh Erskine]]'s ''The Whirlwind''.<ref>{{citation |url=https://www.stephenongpin.com/object/791273/18212/portrait-of-giovanni-boldini |title=Biography of Walter Sickert}}</ref> Between 1894 and 1904, Sickert made a series of visits to [[Venice]], initially focusing on the city's topography; it was during his last painting trip in 1903–04 that, forced indoors by inclement weather, he developed a distinctive approach to the multiple-figure tableau that he further explored on his return to Britain.<ref>Upstone, 2009, pp. 9–11.</ref> The models for many of the Venetian paintings are believed to have been prostitutes, whom Sickert might have known through being a client.<ref>Upstone 2009, p. 47.</ref>
[[File:HelenCarte1885.jpg|right|thumb|''The Acting Manager or Rehearsal: The End of the Act'', (portrait of [[Helen Carte]]), {{circa|1885}}]]Sickert's fascination with urban culture accounted for his acquisition of studios in working-class sections of London, first in [[Cumberland Market]] in the 1890s, then in [[Camden Town]] in 1905.<ref>Upstone 2009, p. 39.</ref> The latter location provided an event that would secure Sickert's prominence in the realist movement in Britain.<ref>Baron et al. 1992, p. 153.</ref>

On 11 September 1907, Emily Dimmock, a prostitute cheating on her partner, was murdered in her home at Agar Grove (then St Paul's Road), Camden. After sexual intercourse the man had slit her throat open while she was asleep, then left in the morning.<ref name=janus/> The [[Camden Town murder]] became an ongoing source of prurient sensationalism in the press.<ref name=janus/> For several years Sickert had already been painting lugubrious female nudes on beds, and continued to do so, deliberately challenging the conventional approach to life painting—"The modern flood of representations of vacuous images dignified by the name of 'the nude' represents an artistic and intellectual bankruptcy"—giving four of them, which included a male figure, the title ''[[The Camden Town Murder]]'', and causing a controversy which ensured attention for his work. These paintings do not show violence, however, but a sad thoughtfulness, explained by the fact that three of them were originally exhibited with completely different titles, one more appropriately being ''What Shall We Do for the Rent?'', and the first in the series, ''Summer Afternoon''.<ref name=janus/>
[[File:La Giuseppina, the Ring, by Walter Sickert.jpg|thumb|''La Giuseppina, the Ring'' (1903–1905)|left]]
While the painterly handling of the works inspired comparison to Impressionism, and the emotional tone suggested a narrative more akin to genre painting, specifically Degas's ''[[Interior (Degas)|Interior]]'',<ref>Baron et al. 1992, p. 208.</ref> the documentary realism of the ''Camden Town'' paintings was without precedent in British art.<ref>Baron et al. 1992, p. 213.</ref> These and other works were painted in heavy [[impasto]] and narrow tonal range. Sickert's best-known work, ''Ennui'' ({{circa|1914}}), reveals his interest in Victorian narrative genres. The composition, which exists in at least five painted versions and was also made into an etching, depicts a couple in a dingy interior gazing abstractedly into empty space, "psychologically estranged from one another".<ref>[https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/walter-richard-sickert-ennui-r1133434 Tate, Walter Richard Sickert, Ennui c.1914]</ref>
[[File:The Basket Shop, Rue St Jean, Dieppe - Walter Richard Sickert - ABDAG000288.jpg|thumb|''The Basket Shop, Rue St Jean, Dieppe'' ({{circa|1911–1912}}), Aberdeen Archives, Gallery and Museums]]
Just before the [[First World War]] he championed the avant-garde artists [[Lucien Pissarro]], [[Jacob Epstein]], [[Augustus John]] and [[Wyndham Lewis]]. At the same time Sickert founded, with other artists, the [[Camden Town Group]] of British painters, named from the district of London in which he lived. This group had been meeting informally since 1905, but was officially established in 1911. It was influenced by [[Post-Impressionism]] and [[Expressionism]], but concentrated on scenes of often drab [[suburb]]an life; Sickert himself said he preferred the kitchen to the drawing room as a scene for paintings.<ref>Baron et al. 1992, p. 156.</ref>

From 1908 to 1912, and again from 1915 to 1918, he was an influential teacher at [[Westminster School of Art]], where [[David Bomberg]], [[Wendela Boreel]], [[Mary Godwin (artist)|Mary Godwin]]<ref name="Kosman">{{cite web |title=Mary Godwin 1887–1960 |url=https://www.louisekosman.com/artists/artist_446.php |website=Louise Kosman |access-date=8 July 2018}}</ref> and [[John Doman Turner]] were among his students. He founded a private art school, Rowlandson House, in the Hampstead Road in 1910.<ref name="Baron&Sickert2006_p80">Baron and Sickert 2006, p. 80.</ref> It lasted until 1914; for most of that period its co-principal and chief financial supporter was the painter [[Sylvia Gosse]], a former student of Sickert.<ref>Hartley 2013, pp. 189–90.</ref> He also briefly set up an art school in Manchester where his students included [[Harry Rutherford]].<ref name="Baron&Sickert2006_p80"/>[[File:Sickert, Ennui.jpg|thumb|right|''Ennui'' (1914), [[Tate Britain]]]]