Editing Walter Sickert (section)

==Style and subjects==
[[File:Sodales Mr Steer and Mr Sickert.jpg|thumb|right|[[Henry Tonks]]. ''Sodales: Mr Steer and Mr Sickert'', 1930]]
For his earliest paintings, Sickert followed Whistler's practice of rapid, wet-in-wet execution using very fluid paint. He subsequently adopted a more deliberate procedure of painting pictures in multiple stages, and "attached a great deal of importance to what he called the 'cooking' side of painting".<ref>Shone and Curtis 1988, p. 6.</ref> He preferred to paint not from nature but from drawings or, after the mid-1920s, from photographs or from popular prints by Victorian illustrators.<ref>Wilcox et al. 1990, p. 10.</ref> After transferring the design to canvas by the use of a grid, Sickert made a rapid underpainting using two colours, which was allowed to dry thoroughly before the final colours were applied. He experimented tirelessly with the details of his method, always with the goal, according to his biographer Wendy Baron, of "paint[ing] quickly, in about two sittings, with the maximum economy and minimum of fuss".<ref>Baron et al. 1992, p. 132.</ref>

Sickert tended to paint his subjects in series.<ref name="ShoneCurtis11" /> He is identified particularly with domestic interior scenes, scenes of Venice, music hall and theatre scenes, and portraits. He painted few [[still life]]s. For his music hall subjects, Sickert often chose complex and ambiguous points of view, so that the spatial relationship between the audience, performer, and orchestra becomes confused, as figures gesture into space and others are reflected in mirrors.<ref>Baron et al. 1992, pp. 16–17.</ref> The isolated rhetorical gestures of singers and actors seem to reach out to no-one in particular, and audience members are portrayed stretching and peering to see things that lie beyond the visible space. This theme of confused or failed communication between people appears frequently in his art. By emphasising the patterns of wallpaper and architectural decorations, Sickert created abstract decorative [[Arabesque (European art)|arabesque]]s and flattened the three-dimensional space. His music hall pictures, like Degas' paintings of dancers and café-concert entertainers, connect the artificiality of art itself to the conventions of theatrical performance and painted backdrops.
[[File:Ludovico Magno.jpg|thumb|left|''Ludovico Magno'' (1930), [[The Phillips Collection]]]]
Sickert often professed his distaste for what he termed the "beastly" character of thickly textured paint.<ref name="Baron 1980"/> In an article he wrote for ''[[The Fortnightly Review]]'' in 1911, he described his reaction to the paintings of [[Van Gogh]]: "I execrate his treatment of the instrument I love, these strips of metallic paint that catch the light like so many dyed straws ... my teeth are set on edge".<ref name="Baron 1980"/> In response to [[Alfred Wolmark]]'s work he declared that "thick oil-paint is the most undecorative matter in the world".<ref>Sickert, Walter, and Anna Gruetzner Robins (2002). ''Walter Sickert: the Complete Writings On Art'',  p. 383. Oxford: Oxford University Press {{ISBN|978-0-19-926169-7}}.</ref>

Nonetheless, Sickert's paintings of the ''Camden Town Murder'' series of {{circa|1906–1909}} were painted in heavy impasto and narrow tonal range, as were numerous other obese nudes in the pre-World War I period in which the fleshiness of the figures is connected to the thickness of the paint—a device that was later adapted by [[Lucian Freud]]. The influence of these paintings on successive generations of British artists has been noted in the works of Freud, [[David Bomberg]], [[Francis Bacon (artist)|Francis Bacon]], [[Frank Auerbach]], [[Howard Hodgkin]], and [[Leon Kossoff]].<ref>Baron et al. 1992, p. 6.</ref>

In the 1910s and 1920s, the dark, gloomy tones of his early paintings gradually brightened,<ref name="ShoneCurtis11">Shone and Curtis 1988, p. 11.</ref> and Sickert juxtaposed unexpected tones with a new boldness in works such as ''[[Brighton Pierrots]]'' (1915) and ''Portrait of Victor Lecourt'' (1921–24). His several self-portraits usually displayed an element of role-playing consistent with his early career as an actor: ''Lazarus Breaks his Fast'' ({{circa|1927}}) and ''The Domestic Bully'' ({{circa|1935–38}}) are examples. Sickert's late works display his preference for thinly scrubbed veils of paint, described by Helen Lessore as "a cool colour rapidly brushed over a warm underpainting (or vice versa) on a coarse canvas and in a restricted range allow[ing] the undercoat to 'grin through'".<ref>Sickert et al. 1981, p. 22.</ref>

Sickert insisted on the importance of subject matter in art, saying that "all the greater draughtsmen tell a story",<ref name="Baron 1980"/> but treated his subjects in a detached manner. [[Max Kozloff]] wrote: "How not to say too much seems to have become a matter of utmost laborious concern for Sickert", as evidenced by his paintings' studied lack of finish and "neurasthenic sobriety" of color.<ref>Kozloff, Max (April 1967). "Sickert's Unsentimental Journey". ''Art News''.  pp. 51–53, 71–72.</ref> According to the painter [[Frank Auerbach]], "Sickert's detachment became increasingly evident in his uninhibited procedures. He made obvious his frequent reliance on snapshots and press photographs, he copied, used and took over the work of other, dead, artists and made extensive use, also, of the services of his assistants who played a large and increasing part in the production of his work."<ref>Sickert et al. 1981, p. 7.</ref>