Although Sickert’s identification with Whistler’s aims and methods remained intense, he began to put forward his own ideas as to how they might best be effected. It was probably apropos the Stephen Manuel portrait that he wrote to his master, urging, ‘[For God’s] sake don’t attempt to repaint the whole picture to [the] boy’s present condition, but merely touch details. The picture is finished.’ The problems of reworking the entire surface of a large canvas at each sitting – putting one layer of paint on another – also inspired Sickert to make independent experiments. ‘I have tried the petroleum oil on the life-size canvas,’ he wrote excitedly to Whistler of one new paint recipe: ‘it is perfect: not sticky like turps: keeps wet: doesn’t sink in: works quicker somehow, and fresher: five of it to one of burnt oil. I wish you would try it.’121 The tone of self-assurance was new but unmistakable.
* Whistler addressed a series of disparaging open letters to Wilde during the course of the year: ‘We, of Tite Street and Beaufort Gardens [home of Mrs Jopling-Rowe], joy in your triumphs and delight in your success; but we are of opinion that, with the exception of your epigrams, you talk like “S[idney] C[olvin] [the Slade Professor] in the provinces”; and that, with the exception of your knee-breeches, you dress like ‘Arry Quilter.’
* Sickert was not habitually clumsy. Many contemporaries recall the precision – and decision – of his movements. If he did drop things around Whistler it must have been the result of nervous over-excitement.
† Amongst the views recorded were several of St John’s Wood, where Ellen was staying at 10a Cunningham Place, in a house occupied by Miss Leigh-Smith, and the painter, Miss E. M. Osborn.
I know that the Sickerts can’t expect other people to see in Dieppe all that it means to them.
(Oswald Valentine Sickert to Eddie Marsh)
It was as an exhibiting artist with pictures hanging in three London galleries that Sickert finally married Ellen Cobden on Wednesday 10 June 1885 at Marylebone Registry Office. He was twenty-five, she was thirty-six. The occasion appears to have been a low-key, almost impromptu affair. According to legend, Sickert nearly missed the service waiting for his bus to come.1 It is not clear that either family was represented – though both were certainly well pleased with the match.2 Mrs Sickert considered Ellen (or ‘Nellie-Walter’ as she became known in the family, to differentiate her from all the other Nellies) ‘delightful’ and ‘so good & loving to me that she always does me good’.3 Whistler, too, was supportive, presenting the happy pair with a wedding gift of a luxurious green-and-white wardrobe painted by himself.4 The prolonged engagement, however, if it had not weakened Sickert’s real affection, had done nothing to raise the temperature of his passion. Three years of waiting had established a pattern to the relationship, increasing Sickert’s sense of independence, and accustoming him to the security of Ellen’s affections and support, while leaving him often at liberty to pursue his own interests, both in work and at play. The bohemian world of the Chelsea studios had often drawn him away from her, and it seems that, even before the marriage, Sickert had begun to have affairs. It was not a pattern he was anxious to break.*5
To many of their friends, the Walter Sickerts seemed a less than obvious pairing. The journalist Herbert Vivian, who met them soon after their marriage, considered that there never had been ‘such an improbable ménage’ as the ‘conventional’ Ellen and the unconventional Walter.6 Blanche thought them more like brother and sister than husband and wife.7 Yet they appear to have been happy. They were united by a common interest in Walter’s career and a belief in his talent. Superficially, Ellen made his life comfortable, and he made hers exciting. But there was more. Sickert was capable of great kindness: he nursed Ellen when she was ill,8 and he made several tender, almost sentimental, portraits of her.9 And from the evidence of Ellen’s partially autobiographical novel, Wistons, it would seem that there were moments of ‘exquisite passion’ in the first days of their marriage.10 Certainly the romantic conventions were not entirely ignored, and after the wedding they departed for a honeymoon in Europe.11
By the height of the season they were at Dieppe. From 19 August they took ‘a dear little house’ in the rue Sygogne, a narrow street running up from the Front, just behind the Casino.12 They were in good spirits. Sickert, in his new role as the young husband, had grown a trim pointed beard and moustache and was looking conspicuously smart. (Blanche was amused to note the extent to which the Cobden connection seemed to have ‘helped palliate’ his ‘bohemianism’.13) The newlyweds found a cast of friends and relatives assembled and assembling. Sickert’s parents and siblings were installed nearby.14 Dorothy Richmond, over again from New Zealand, came to stay at the rue Sygogne, as did Ellen’s sister Jane.15 Whistler was expected later in September. John Lemoinne, the distinguished editor of the Journal des Débats, was also in town with his three daughters. Lemoinne had known Richard Cobden and was anxious to make Ellen’s acquaintance. At the Bas Fort Blanc, Blanche had gathered together a trio of rising young painters – Paul Helleu, Rafael de Ochoa, and Henri Gervex, while the next-door villa, ‘Les Rochers’, had been taken by the popular librettist Ludovic Halévy and his family – an aged mother, pious sister, wife, and two young sons – Elie and Daniel. The Halévys had two house guests: Albert Boulanger-Cavé (a former Minister of the Fine Arts under Louis Philippe), and – as Walter ‘learned with delight’ – Edgar Degas.16
Degas’ presence animated the whole party and gave to the five households a common bond of interest. The assembled company passed a happy month together in great intimacy.17 Everyone loved Degas. They listened to his stories and went along with his jokes.18 Ellen found him ‘perfectly delightful’.19 Young Oswald Valentine Sickert felt that he should ‘never forget the gentleness and charm of his personality’.20 The great artist was in holiday mood that summer – playful, communicative, and at ease. He posed for a series of humorous photographic tableaux, commissioned from the indigent local photographer, Walter Barnes: one of them was a pastiche of Ingres’ Apotheosis