Sunday

Sickert Not The Ripper?

In the 1930s Walter Sickert was the pre-eminent painter in Britain - now he is better known as "the man who might have been Jack the Ripper". Matthew Sturgis's outstanding new biography attempts to reassert Sickert's original fame over his posthumous infamy. His standing now is somewhat below the first rank - a judgment confirmed by his auction house prices (the record for one of his paintings stands at a relatively modest 200,000 pounds). While Sickert was undoubtedly a painter of importance on the British scene, that is not the same as being a painter of important pictures. His legacy is as a champion of Impressionism, a long-lived link to the greats of 19th-century painting, an early practitioner of seedy realism and as a pioneering modern artist in the way he used photography and the press to further his art and his public profile. For the full story - click the title Irish Art