Walter Sickert: A Life. Matthew Sturgis

with Sir Frederic Leyland over the bill for the decoration of the Peacock Room, his reputation was suspect. To have one’s portrait painted by Whistler was, they felt, to risk the ridicule of the artistic world, to say nothing of the possible ire of the artist if things did not work out as he wished. Those few who did commission portraits in the early 1880s were either brave or reckless – brazen demi-mondaines, old friends, independent spirits, and Americans. In the absence of more numerous commissions Whistler made use of models both professional and amateur. On occasion he even picked people off the street and invited them to pose at the studio. Failing that, he painted himself or his studio assistants. Sickert was soon pressed into service as a model.⁵

      Whistler’s world was totally engrossing – to himself and to those about him. It was a world dominated by art, or by Whistler’s conception of art. His person and his pictures were the twinned and abiding themes of his existence, and Sickert – along with Menpes – came to share the same perspective. Sickert’s commitment was total. With the closing of The Squire in March 1882 he abandoned the stage completely, to concentrate on his discipleship. Menpes has left a vivid account of the daily round: the early summons by hand-delivered note (‘Come at once – important’); the close perusal of the morning post and papers, followed by the excited elaboration of scathing ripostes to any insults, real or perceived; the stroll around the shabby streets of old Chelsea armed with a pochade box (for small oil sketches) or an etching-plate in search of appealing subjects for a morning’s sketching – a street corner perhaps or a humble shopfront; the lunchtime omelette back at Tite Street (the creation of the omelette, being a work of art, fell to Whistler); and then the afternoon of work and talk in the studio.⁶

      Whistler staged his indoor pictures with care. Sickert had to help prepare the studio for the various models and sitters, either establishing an elaborately informal mise-en-scène with suitable ‘aesthetic’ props, or erecting the cumbersome black velvet backdrop against which Whistler had taken to posing sitters for full-length portraits.⁷ Before beginning his picture Whistler would mix a quantity of all the tones he would require, and it became Sickert’s duty to set out these carefully prepared paints – in their designated order – on the glass-topped table that served as Whistler’s palette.⁸

      Later, the pupils might walk with the Master into the West End to watch him ‘terrorize’ his tailor, his hairdresser, or the various Bond Street art dealers. (His method with these last was to stride through the door of their establishment, pause for an instant, and then exclaim ‘Ha, ha! Amazing!’ in a loud voice before sailing out again.) Or they might make a brief visit to the National Gallery. From there they would continue on a circuit of evening pleasures – receptions and private views, dinner at the Arts Club in Dover Street, very occasionally the theatre or a concert. (Whistler had no ear for music, and by and large found late-Victorian drama considerably less entertaining than his own existence.) The late hours were spent talking amongst friends at the Hogarth Club, the Falstaff, or the St Stephen’s before a walk home along the Embankment to admire the effects of the lamp-lit night over the river.⁹

      This well-established routine was carried out against a shifting background of alarms and changes. Whistler, as Sickert soon recognized, liked to live life as a succession of crises.¹⁰ Both unwilling and unable to economize, he existed always on the brink of financial disaster. Other dramas, if less self-willed, were equally disturbing. Within weeks of Sickert’s arrival at Tite Street, the erstwhile pottery decorator had to be removed to a lunatic asylum. Several of Whistler’s precious portrait commissions came to premature ends. Sir Henry Cole, the head of the Kensington Museums, dropped dead (killed, as Sickert liked to believe, by the exertion of having to pose in a heavy Inverness cape).¹¹ Lady Meux, a former barmaid married to a brewery magnate, stormed off after a row, and Lady Archibald Campbell was only just persuaded not to abandon her own sittings following a heated difference of artistic opinion.¹² Such aesthetic squalls were common. Once Whistler was engaged upon a portrait he was tyrannical, demanding endless sittings, and treating his sitter as little more than a pictorial prop.¹³

      Whistler, though never slow to give offence, was always quick to take it. He was a master in ‘the gentle art of making enemies’. He nursed grievances with care: to a suggestion that he should ‘Let bygones be bygones’ he replied hotly, ‘That is just what you must never let them be.’¹⁴ He was implacable in opposition, and never forgave. Having fallen from grace, his erstwhile disciples – the devoted Greaves brothers – were either not mentioned or dismissed as ‘negligible’.¹⁵

      For Sickert, however, the evidence of such animosities merely emphasized his own privileged position within the charmed circle. And he was very conscious of how privileged it was. To have been suddenly swept into close daily contact with the ‘god of his idolatry’ was an extraordinary thing: the acme of his desires. Familiarity bred only deeper admiration. He found Whistler the man as great as Whistler the painter. In a considered summary of his qualities he described him as, ‘Sunny, courageous, handsome, soigné. Entertaining, serviable, gracious, good-natured, easy-going. A charmeur and a dandy with a passion for work. A heart that was ever lifted up by its courage and genius. A beacon of light and happiness to everyone who was privileged to come within its comforting and brightening rays.’¹⁶

      Despite his designation as a ‘pupil’ of Whistler, Sickert was more a studio dogsbody than a student. He received no formal training at Tite Street. Whistler – even if he insisted on being addressed as Master – was not a natural teacher. He had no formulated scheme of how to proceed. ‘All you need to know,’ he told Sickert and Menpes, ‘is which end of the brush to put in your mouth.’¹⁷ Beyond this, lessons had to be learnt indirectly by observation and deduction.

      There was plenty of opportunity. Sickert was able to watch Whistler at work every day – in the streets of Chelsea, and at the Tite Street studio. Sometimes he was allowed to paint alongside him from the same model, even on occasion taking his colours off the same palette. Whistler, though completely absorbed in his own work, might dispense the odd – and much cherished – word of general encouragement. Amongst his recurrent utterances were ‘Stick it Sickert’ and ‘Shove along Walter, shove along.’¹⁸ On very rare occasions he might even give a specific demonstration of some technical point. Sickert carefully preserved a ‘little panel of a model’ he had painted, ‘not very well’, and which Whistler finished ‘with some exquisite passages in a lace dress and velvet curtain’.¹⁹ But the pace of instruction could never be forced. Any direct question was likely to be answered with the explosion, ‘“Pshaw! You must be occupied with the Master, not with yourselves. There is plenty to be done.”’ And Whistler would promptly invent some task for his inquisitive assistant – ‘a picture to be taken to Dowdeswell’s [Gallery], or a copperplate to have a ground put on it.’²⁰ For Sickert and Menpes there remained always a tantalizing sense of mystery. ‘We felt’, Menpes recalled, ‘that the Master was in possession of tremendous secrets about art, but we never got within a certain crust of reserve … in which he kept his real artistic self.’ But then, as they admitted to each other, how could they expect that ‘one so great would readily reveal himself’.²¹

      Nevertheless, through the days of close contact Sickert began slowly to build up an understanding of Whistler’s