Walter Sickert: A Life. Matthew Sturgis

political figure: Charles Bradlaugh, the great secularist and former Liberal MP for Northampton.⁶ On his first election to the House of Commons in 1880, Bradlaugh had provoked an outcry amongst the Tory ranks when he announced his intention of ‘affirming’ as an atheist rather than taking the ‘oath’ of allegiance. The move was blocked, and though the issue was much debated it proved intractable. Bradlaugh was allowed to remain an MP (he was re-elected four times) but his position was anomalous and he was obliged to speak from the bar of the House. Although in 1890 he had just given up his seat, he was still much involved with radical and secular causes.⁷ Sickert was greatly taken with the energetic old politician; and Bradlaugh, radical in all things, warmed not only to Sickert but also to his art: he agreed to have his portrait done.⁸ There were no formal ‘sittings’. Sickert merely sat in the corner of Bradlaugh’s study and made sketches of him while he was at work, moving about, dictating letters, and receiving visitors. From these sketches he painted a vivid likeness.⁹ The picture, together with the portraits of Steer and ‘Miss Fancourt’, were Sickert’s three submissions to the NEAC that spring.

      At Sickert’s suggestion the show was not held at a conventional picture gallery but at Humphreys Mansions, a new block of flats in Knightsbridge. It was a domestic setting similar to that in which, Sickert hoped, the pictures might end up. Tea was served – a novel arrangement that nearly defeated the organizers: Sidney Starr had to dash out at the last moment when it was realized that no one had bought any milk.¹⁰ But even liquid refreshment could not persuade the critics of the success of the experiments. The large low rooms were too ill lit to allow the pictures to be seen properly.¹¹

      Despite the general gloom, Sickert’s pictures were noted. His shift to portraiture was welcomed. The portrait of Bradlaugh was almost ‘universally pronounced the best likeness of Mr Bradlaugh ever painted’;¹² but Sickert’s close connection with the music-hall stage and artistic daring was not relinquished completely. Copies of his ‘London Impressionists’ catalogue preface were kept available for those visitors asking for ‘a written explanation’ of the movement.¹³ And the stage identity of ‘Miss Fancourt’ was widely reported.¹⁴ Also Steer (Sickert’s third portrait subject) was exhibiting – in a rare excursion from conventional matter – a canvas of Mme Sozo on the stage of the Tivoli. In the critical hubbub surrounding the exhibition, a new voice was heard: that of D. S. MacColl, a fiercely intelligent Scots-born artist who had taken over as art critic on The Spectator at the beginning of the year. Having trained under Fred Brown at Westminster he was enthusiastic about the experiments of the London Impressionists, and rather stunned expectations when he expressed that enthusiasm in the staid pages of the nation’s leading Conservative periodical.¹⁵ Moore, too, had gained a more prominent position, as art critic for The Speaker, from which to further the cause.¹⁶

      The 1890 spring show confirmed the NEAC as the principal platform for ‘new and disputed talent’ and Sickert and Steer as its twin – and linked – stars.¹⁷ Having achieved their position, they set about exploiting it by making an attack on the citadel of established tradition. They submitted works to the Royal Academy summer show, and then, when the pictures were rejected, took out newspaper advertisements to announce the fact – a stunt that produced its own harvest of publicity.¹⁸ Barred from Burlington House, they lowered their sights to 12 Pembroke Gardens. Sickert began to hold informal weekend showings at the house of work by himself, Steer, and the other London Impressionists.¹⁹ They became a focus for young painters. Amongst those who came was a recent recruit to the NEAC, Florence Pash.

      Florence was a forceful and handsome figure: tall, dark-haired, with heavy-lidded eyes. Though at twenty-eight she was two years younger than Sickert, she had established herself with remarkable assurance in the London art world. The daughter of a successful North London shoe retailer, she had studied painting briefly at South Kensington and in France under Blanche’s friend Henri Gervex, before returning home and beginning to exhibit with the RSBA and the Society of Women Artists. She had shown also at the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon. Capable and independent, she set up her own teaching studio at 132 Sloane Street and conducted painting classes, mainly for ‘society women’.²⁰ Though too little of her work survives to judge of it clearly, she seems to have belonged in the ‘movement’. She certainly made some paintings of contemporary street scenes; and perhaps a trace of Whistlerian influence can be glimpsed behind Sickert’s description of her as ‘the principal of a flourishing academy for the propagation of spacious backgrounds’.²¹

      Sickert had first met Florence in the mid 1880s when they were both showing at Suffolk Street, but it was with the new decade that the connection developed. Sickert insisted on painting her portrait, commandeering Bernhard’s studio room at Pembroke Gardens for the purpose. Ellen seems to have been away, but the work was not infrequently interrupted by the sudden appearance of Mrs Sickert, looking in to see how the picture was progressing, and by Walter’s youngest brother Leonard, who would come in on his return from school and make shy comments.²² Despite this close familial scrutiny, it is possible, even likely, that the friendship with Florence became an affair. The portrait done at Pembroke Gardens was only one of several that Sickert made of her that year. Three other paintings, as well as numerous drawings and pastels, were done at Florence’s teaching studio in Sloane Street. There were also trips together to the music halls, intimate dinners in a little restaurant near Warren Street, and tram rides to the suburbs to provide ‘a little fresh air & relaxation after a long day’s painting’.²³ Florence flattered Sickert’s vanity: sitting to him, seeking his advice on painting matters, and, so it seems, either buying his work or giving him some employment. He addressed her in an early letter as ‘Mlle L’Eleve – Mlle la modele – Mlle mon amie – Mlle la Patronne’.²⁴

      One of their first excursions together was to the Royal Academy. Sickert had a commission from Art Weekly, the periodical edited by Francis Bate, for a two-part ‘signed review’ of the Summer Show.²⁵ Art Weekly was not Sickert’s only press outlet that summer. Herbert Vivian, his young journalist friend, announced plans for a ‘lively and eccentric newspaper’ to be called The Whirlwind,²⁶ and Sickert agreed to be the art critic of this satirical weekly. The first issue, published at the end of June 1890, heralded him with generous hyperbole as ‘one of the leading Impressionist painters of the age’. Sickert wrote at once to the ‘editor-proprietors’, Vivian and his partner the Hon. Stuart Erskine, protesting at the ‘shamelessness’ of this description. The letter was published in the next issue above the terse note: ‘Mr Sickert has forgotten. He wrote the paragraph himself.’²⁷ The position gave Sickert ample scope for promoting the ‘cause’, albeit amongst a limited and probably already converted readership. He wrote reviews, letters, general articles, as well as commentaries on pictures by his fellow London Impressionists. The paintings under discussion were reproduced in line-block, sometimes by Sickert himself, as ‘The Whirlwind Diploma Gallery of Modern Pictures’.

      Sickert also contributed drawings of his own. His excursion