Download a PDF of the exhibition catalogue - The Scottish Gallery

Walter Richard Sickert was born in Germany in 1860 and can be seen as one of the most influential British artists of
the 20th century. Sickert’s adoption of new and daring subject matter, twinned with a loose, suggestive handling of
paint directly influenced the Camden Town Group and the Euston Road School, as well as heralding many international
developments of the 20th century. His subject matter included depictions of ordinary people in urban environments,
music hall, theatre and the demi-monde themes much influenced by his mentor Degas, who he had first met in Paris in
1883. His adoption of social realistic subject matter, often with sexual undertones, had not been seen before in British
art and was considered deeply shocking at the time.
Sickert exhibited a series of paintings in the Leicester Galleries in 1937, based on 19th century illustrative
engravings published in popular magazines, the sources of the painting often inscribed in the lower corner – as we see in
this example The Holocaust, after Mary Ellen Edwards. These ‘English Echoes’ as they came to be known appeared to have
little or no link with his earlier work. Some admirers of Sickert of were alarmed by these seemingly static scenes and
regarded them as a decline in the painter’s artistic ability. However they did enjoy success, examples being purchased by
the Louvre and the National Gallery. By appropriating images from popular culture Sickert prefigures Pop Art by twenty
years and emphasizes the ambiguity of the relationship between subject and viewer.
Between 1930 and his death in 1942, Sickert’s paint texture grew drier, the application of it sparser and his
engagement with his subject less direct, painting more and more from photographs. Lillian Browse, from whom Blyth
bought several Sickerts from during the 1940s, did not like the later work; she remembers arguing with Blyth about the
matter. She recalled, “He liked the late Sickerts too; I didn’t, preferring the ‘rich juicy paint’ and we constantly used to
tease and argue.” Although Miss Browse acknowledged that Blyth “was a passionate lover of Sickert and always adamant
in his choice.”
Walter Richard Sickert (1860–1942)
The Holocaust after Mary Ellen Edwards, c.1937
Oil on canvas, 71 x 46 cms
Signed lower right and inscribed with title lower left
Exhibited:
Leicester Galleries, London, 1937
Aitken Dott & Son, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1942
Literature:
Wendy Baron, Sickert Paintings and Drawings, (Yale University Press,
New Haven and London, 2006) p. 515, no. 659
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