Walter Sickert - an artist of modern Life

Walter Sickert (1860-1942) holds a special position in British Art as the link between two different ages. The student of both Whistler and Degas, Sickert went on to influence (at one remove) many of the great figures of twentieth century painting from Bacon and Freud to Auerbach and Hockney. He was also a towering figure in his own right. His life was one of extraordinary richness: as a teenager, he acted with Henry Irving and helped Ellen Terry choose her costumes. He taught Aubrey Beardsley and Sir Winston Churchill how to paint (though not at the same time). He delighted Max Beerbohm with his wit and inspired Virginia Woolf with his paintings.

Cropped Image: Ennui (1914) from Tate Britain. Photograph is in the Public Domain

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THE ARTS SOCIETY ACCREDITED LECTURER

Mr Matthew Sturgis

Matthew Sturgis is the author of acclaimed biographies of three of the great cultural figures of the late nineteenth century: Oscar Wilde, Walter Sickert and Aubrey Beardsley. (His biography of Oscar Wilde was shortlisted for the 2019 Wolfson History Prize.) He has also written a history of the English Decadence of the 1890s. A.N. Wilson - writing in the Times Literary Supplement - described him as ’the greatest chronicler of the 1890s we have ever had.’ His historical and cultural interests also led him to write a book - When In Rome - chronicling the history of how Rome has been visited, and the artworks tourists have admire there, over the millennia - from Classical and Medieval times, via the Renaissance and the Grand Tour, to our own era.

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