Walter Sickert, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester - drawing is the thing

Walter Sickert: drawing is the thing
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
1 October - 5 December 2004

‘Any fool can paint, but drawing is the thing and drawing is the test.’

Walter Sickert (1860-1942) is seen as a major figure within the history of British painting and yet by his own affirmation drawing lay at the core of his creative process. Walter Sickert drew constantly in order to capture new subjects for his paintings – theatrical interiors, the stage, and highly-charged domestic dramas such as The Camden Town Murder. Walter Sickert: ‘drawing is the thing’ examines every form of drawing Walter Sickert made, together with a number of related paintings and prints. Together these works offer an insight into Walter Sickert’s techniques, themes and, most importantly, his reasons for drawing.

Walter Sickert’s earliest, small drawings were made in the semi-darkness of the theatre, and he kept a selection of these in his possession until his death, emphasising their importance to him. He mounted them in an idiosyncratic way, several to a mount. Many are inscribed with details of lighting, colour and costume. They are not only one of the best documents of London’s theatrical interiors and performances of the late 19th century, but also evidence if his daily, or rather nightly, practice of drawing from real-life situations. Their style in the main is one of the quick, evocative sketch, the line which above all must be rapid. Walter Sickert also made more considered drawings of the theatre, some of which were very finished and which were used as preparation for prints and paintings. These he would often square up in an elaborate way, using red ink and numbering the squares to facilitate their transfer.

Walter Sickert’s depictions of couples in an interior are rightly recognised as his major achievement, and this body of work forms the central part of the exhibition. Just as many of Walter Sickert’s theatrical interiors featured the dynamic tension between audience and performer so his domestic dramas are full of psychological tension with couples engaged in the whole gamut of enigmatic confrontation. Drawings like A Weak Defence (Arts Council of England), The Prevaricator(The British Council) and The Conversation (Royal College of Art) have given rise to recent speculation on the relevance of the Jack The Ripper crimes to Walter Sickert and his work. A central feature of the exhibition is a section assembling all the known drawings for his famous composition Ennui, together with the paintings and prints they inspired.

The unusual nature of Walter Sickert’s subject-matter extends to his choice of unconventional models, both architectural and human. He rejected professional models and preferred unglamorous, working-class parts of town. The exhibition also explores the relationship between Walter Sickert and one of his models, Cicely Hey, or ‘Kikely’ as he chose to call her. The sixty-two year old Sickert and Cicely, a young art student, met in 1923 and they became firm friends. He made a series of works featuring her ‘dear little face’, which she eventually bequeathed to The Whitworth Art Gallery. They show the artist using drawing to record a relationship – in contrast to his invention of relationships in his domestic fictions.

Walter Sickert taught drawing and painting, and examples of his drawings were obviously used for teaching purposes. His system of developing a painting is exemplified by unfinished works including My Awful Dad (Private Collection). Works by pupils Sylvia Gosse and Harry Rutherford, show the influence of Walter Sickert and exemplify the methods he advocated as a teacher when, for example he conducted an evening class in Manchester in the late 1920s.

Walter Sickert stopped drawing at about the age of seventy, around 1930, and employed a new range of sources, including engravings, newspaper cuttings or photographs. On occasions, Walter Sickert would square up a photograph for transfer, exactly as he had done drawings earlier in this life.

This loan exhibition comprises about 150 works, drawn from the UK’s most prominent collections, both public and private. This most extensive exhibition of Walte Sickert’s drawings ever be exhibited is supported by a fully illustrated catalogue features essays by prominent scholars in the field. Following the showing at The Whitworth Art Gallery, it will travel to Southampton City Art Gallery and then to The Ulster Museum, Belfast.

The exhibition is supported by The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

THE WHITWORTH ART GALLERY
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6ER
www.whitworth.man.ac.uk