Sickert needed to find a new forum for his work. Steer and several other of Sickert’s Baker Street confrères had recently exhibited with a society called the New English Art Club, and their example encouraged him to look in this direction.17 The club had been established only the previous year, in 1886, by a group of artists, the majority of whom had received some training in the Paris studios (indeed one suggested name for the club had been ‘The Society of Anglo-French Painters’).18 The original members were ‘a mixed crew’ and the influence that France exerted over the work took various forms – and existed at various strengths.19 John Singer Sargent was a founder member, but perhaps the dominant artistic strain was the large-scale plein-airism derived from Bastien-Lepage: scenes of a slightly sentimentalized English rural realism done in ‘what [was] known as French technique’.20 This school was represented by George Clausen, Stanhope Forbes, Henry la Thangue, Henry Scott Tuke, and numerous lesser lights.
Besides the Baker Street group, there were a few other members of the new body who professed an interest in the work of the French Impressionists, even if their own pictures tended to show only the faintest traces of actual influence. It was one of these, Fred Brown, who had invited Steer to exhibit with the club, having been impressed by the quasi-idyllic painting of a goat girl exhibited at the SBA in 1885.21 Brown, then in his mid thirties, had been teaching at the Westminster School of Art since 1877, offering night classes in drawing and painting to working men and part-time students. He was an inspired and inspiring teacher, and had established a reputation for the clarity of his approach. It was work that kept him in touch with the rising generation of artists – as well as giving him a taste for administrative organization. He emerged as one of the guiding spirits of the new club and drew up its novel, and thoroughly democratic, constitution: there was no president, only an honorary secretary; and exhibitors had the same voting rights as members.22
As in the early days of most institutions, there was some jockeying for influence and control. Brown was anxious to secure his own circle of support within the club – hence his invitation to Steer to show at the club’s inaugural exhibition in the spring of 1886, and again in 1887.23 And he was delighted to meet a potential new recruit in Sickert, who, in turn, was no less delighted to meet Brown. He grasped at once the possibilities of the situation: here was a young, unformed institution that might serve as a home for himself and his confrères. He infected Brown with something of this vision, and plans were soon afoot to seize ‘a greater, and, if possible, a dominating influence’ in the running of the club.24 Sickert was able to marshal the other members of the Whistlerian faction: Starr, Menpes, and Francis James all agreed to show with the NEAC in future, as did Sickert’s brother Bernhard, and Paul Maitland.25 The group’s position was further enhanced when the club’s secretary retired at the end of the year and was replaced by the 34-year-old Francis Bate. Bate was both an admirer of Whistler and a friend of Brown’s.26 He joined the frequent meetings, in which Sickert took the lead, that were taking place to discuss the strategy of the planned coup. They were held in Sickert’s studio at Broadhurst Gardens, and, as Brown recalled, ‘with Sickert as host, our little conspiracies were not very sombre affairs … His gaiety was contagious, his manner charming, his wit bubbling.’27 Brown, despite his seniority, found himself swept along by his young companions. Sickert later described him as having been ‘caught up by our movement as by a cow catcher on a train’.28
In the first instance, Sickert seems to have viewed the infiltration of the NEAC as part of the grand Whistlerian project. He tried at every juncture to include his master in his developing plans for the club. But it was a difficult matter to achieve. Whistler, despite his problems, was still committed at Suffolk Street, and he could not very well become a member of a new body after his recent demands for exclusive loyalty to the RSBA. Nevertheless, he did consent to send a print to the NEAC’s show in the spring of 1888, and to allow Sickert to show Ellen’s canvas, A White Note.29 (Sickert further reinforced the connection by exhibiting a small panel of ‘The Vale’, which cognoscenti would have recognized as Whistler’s home.) But Sickert’s horizons were no longer bounded by Chelsea. His own music-hall works took off from the example of Degas, while Steer, in a series of sun-drenched depictions of young girls at the seaside, was experimenting with ever more brilliant colours and ever more broken brushwork, inspired by a study of Monet’s technique. Sickert sought to foster these French ties and enhance the club’s prestige. Following Whistler’s own example in wooing Monet, he approached Degas. There were hopes that the great man might even be persuaded to become a member of the club. At all events, he gave permission for Sickert to exhibit the Danseuse Verte.30
Sickert showed his own commitment to the new venture by sending in his largest and most daring picture to date: a tall, thin music-hall scene, some five foot by three foot, depicting Gatti’s Hungerford Palace of Varieties – Second Turn of Katie Lawrence. He could be confident that it would be accepted, since he was on the selection committee.31 The machinations of Brown and Bate had packed the jury, and by acting in concert they were able to determine the character of the show. As one hostile critic later recalled, a ‘new spirit made itself felt’.32 In the hanging of the show the two places of honour, in the centre of the long walls of the Dudley Gallery, were given to Steer and Sickert. It was the first of many occasions on which they appeared as the twin pillars of New English Art. As tended to happen on such occasions, the critics displayed their open-mindedness by offering a few words of faint praise for one before damning the other. Steer was represented by A Summer’s Evening, a large canvas of three nude girls on a beach that combined his radical Monet-inspired brushwork with the more familiar comforts of an idyllic scene. Though some reviewers found its agglomeration of ‘red, blue and yellow spots’ an unpardonable ‘affectation’, more were upset by Sickert’s picture.33
His depiction of Katie Lawrence was derided as resembling ‘a marionette’, ‘a temporarily galvanised lay-figure’, and ‘an impudent wooden doll … with hands down to her knees’ and her mouth ‘twisted under her left ear’.34 One paper suggested that Miss Lawrence should sue the artist for defamation.35 The absence of detail, the lack of ‘finish’, the want of ‘graceful composition’, and the vulgarity of the subject matter were all resoundingly condemned.36 It was acknowledged that these unfortunate traits were programmatic – the ‘affected mannerisms’ of the ‘advanced Impressionists’.37 Although to many English commentators Whistler remained the prime – if not the sole – ‘Impressionist’, knowledge of the French members of the school was slowly percolating into the critical consciousness. Following several recent showings of work by Monet, Steer’s broken-colour technique was recognized as being in the French artist’s manner. And the presence of the Danseuse Verte on the walls of the Dudley Gallery ensured that a firm connection was noted between the work of Sickert and Degas.38
The critic