Walter Sickert

Every post here is by Walter Sickert.

Erisava Staff Jul 28

The Cigarette (Jeanne Daurmont) by Walter Sickert, 1906

The Cigarette (Jeanne Daurmont)

Metropolitan Museum of Art · wikidata.org

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He spent his career on music halls and rented rooms rather than polite society portraits, and the sitter here was apparently a young Belgian woman he painted more than once around that time. There's also a small industry of writers who've tried to pin the Whitechapel murders on him — nothing proved, but the story trails his name around.

Erisava Staff Jul 11

Maple Street, London by Walter Sickert, 1915

Maple Street, London

Metropolitan Museum of Art · wikidata.org

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According to Wikipedia he made a point of painting the shabby corners of the city — back streets, cheap lodgings, music halls — when that wasn't what anyone was buying. He mostly didn't stand out in the road to do it either; the accounts say he worked from small sketches and photographs once he was back indoors.