0:00:13 > 0:00:15Taking shelter from a dark, metallic sky,
0:00:15 > 0:00:19Londoners gather in the Lyceum Theatre -
0:00:19 > 0:00:22October 13th, 1915 -
0:00:22 > 0:00:25to forget the atrocity unfolding in the trenches.
0:00:27 > 0:00:29Their entertainment soon cut short.
0:00:34 > 0:00:37From German Zeppelins, bombs rained down,
0:00:37 > 0:00:40killing 17, injuring 21.
0:00:43 > 0:00:46Walter Richard Sickert had once been an actor on the Lyceum stage.
0:00:48 > 0:00:51Although, by 1915, he'd become Britain's most famous painter.
0:00:53 > 0:00:56But, in a sense, he'd never left the stage behind.
0:00:58 > 0:01:00Always shapeshifting between roles,
0:01:00 > 0:01:03Sickert's appearance never stayed still.
0:01:06 > 0:01:09And his art, too, was in perpetual transformation.
0:01:11 > 0:01:14Dazzlingly original, deeply unsettling,
0:01:14 > 0:01:17poised on the brink of violence.
0:01:18 > 0:01:22Proof that Sickert's the godfather of modern British art.
0:01:23 > 0:01:25But, for a few at the fringes,
0:01:25 > 0:01:28evidence that he was Jack the Ripper.
0:01:28 > 0:01:33Sickert's only crime was to tell the truth about the times he lived in -
0:01:33 > 0:01:37notably the absurd tragedy of World War I.
0:01:40 > 0:01:43Too old to fight in Flanders, Sickert painted edgy,
0:01:43 > 0:01:48compelling, subtle pictures of those who'd been left behind.
0:01:48 > 0:01:51He painted people trying to get on with lives
0:01:51 > 0:01:54that were being shattered by the conflict.
0:01:54 > 0:01:57Almost alone of his generation, Sickert truly understood
0:01:57 > 0:02:01that the theatre of war was not confined to the trenches.
0:02:04 > 0:02:06Other artists, young enough to fight,
0:02:06 > 0:02:09attempted to wrestle the conflict into meaning.
0:02:11 > 0:02:14This series tells the story of three British painters
0:02:14 > 0:02:17whose lives coincided with this world-changing moment.
0:02:20 > 0:02:22They set out to depict a new world,
0:02:22 > 0:02:24but found themselves working in the rubble.
0:02:56 > 0:02:59Before the curtain rose on the life of Walter Sickert,
0:02:59 > 0:03:01the stage was already set.
0:03:03 > 0:03:05A passion for art and a flair for the theatrical
0:03:05 > 0:03:07ran through Sickert's veins.
0:03:11 > 0:03:15Walter was the first-born child of Oswald and Eleanor Sickert.
0:03:15 > 0:03:19His father, born in Denmark, was a Paris-trained artist.
0:03:20 > 0:03:22His mother was English by birth -
0:03:22 > 0:03:26the illegitimate daughter of an Irish chorus girl.
0:03:26 > 0:03:28Sickert rejoiced in his mongrel roots,
0:03:28 > 0:03:32performed them like a music hall turn, complete with punch line.
0:03:33 > 0:03:36"No-one could be more English than I am.
0:03:36 > 0:03:40"Born in Munich in 1860, of pure Danish descent!"
0:03:42 > 0:03:47The family moved to England in 1869, settling in London.
0:03:47 > 0:03:51By the age of 12, Sickert felt English with a vengeance.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56And he looked so English that the artist George W Joy
0:03:56 > 0:03:58recast him as a young Horatio Nelson.
0:04:00 > 0:04:02The first of many metamorphoses -
0:04:02 > 0:04:05from young Bavarian to English naval hero.
0:04:07 > 0:04:10Sickert felt at home when in character.
0:04:10 > 0:04:12Acting seemed the ideal profession.
0:04:16 > 0:04:19Aged 24, every inch the matinee idol.
0:04:21 > 0:04:25"Like a spirit from some world where no-one had ever been unhappy,"
0:04:25 > 0:04:29as he was conjured up by his future wife, Ellen Cobden.
0:04:31 > 0:04:34Sickert was clearly destined for fame,
0:04:34 > 0:04:35of one kind or another.
0:04:37 > 0:04:39Sickert's self-belief paid off.
0:04:39 > 0:04:43A series of bit-parts followed on the Lyceum stage,
0:04:43 > 0:04:45and he was then hired as a utility player
0:04:45 > 0:04:48in a touring production of Henry V.
0:04:48 > 0:04:51He didn't appear under the foreign sounding name Walter Sickert,
0:04:51 > 0:04:57but under the stage name "Mr Nemo" - Latin for "No Man".
0:04:57 > 0:05:01Partly a reference to his lowly status as a bit-part actor,
0:05:01 > 0:05:06but also, a sly wink to the shifting masks of the actor.
0:05:06 > 0:05:09Now, he may not have continued with his career on the stage,
0:05:09 > 0:05:12but Sickert did, I think, live the rest of his life
0:05:12 > 0:05:14as if it were a theatrical performance,
0:05:14 > 0:05:17and nothing could have been more boring to him
0:05:17 > 0:05:20than to play just one role.
0:05:20 > 0:05:23He was always a shapeshifting character
0:05:23 > 0:05:26moving from one part to another, one city to another,
0:05:26 > 0:05:28one relationship to another.
0:05:28 > 0:05:31Sickert was a man who could not stay still.
0:05:36 > 0:05:38But only bit-parts materialised.
0:05:38 > 0:05:42His looks and charisma failed to ignite his career.
0:05:43 > 0:05:45Sickert's was a precocious talent -
0:05:45 > 0:05:49even more gifted at the easel than he was on the stage.
0:05:51 > 0:05:54Art was his true vocation.
0:05:54 > 0:05:55But how was he to pursue it?
0:05:56 > 0:06:02The work of one painter, American by birth and 26 years his senior,
0:06:02 > 0:06:04seemed to point a way forward.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09"Art for art's sake" was the fashionable phrase of the day
0:06:09 > 0:06:15and no-one embodied that more fully than James Abbot McNeill Whistler,
0:06:15 > 0:06:16the "Butterfly".
0:06:16 > 0:06:18Now, his painting may have been
0:06:18 > 0:06:21as evanescent and as shimmering as a butterfly's wings,
0:06:21 > 0:06:24and his titles were certainly ethereal -
0:06:24 > 0:06:26Nocturne, Composition, Arrangement -
0:06:26 > 0:06:28all drawn from the world of music,
0:06:28 > 0:06:33but in real life, he was a combative and aggressive man.
0:06:33 > 0:06:36A butterfly, yes, but with a sting in his tail.
0:06:39 > 0:06:42As those who tangled with Whistler knew all too well.
0:06:44 > 0:06:48Nocturne In Black And Gold - The Falling Rocket.
0:06:48 > 0:06:50"A pot of paint flung in the public's face,"
0:06:50 > 0:06:53the art critic John Ruskin had howled.
0:06:53 > 0:06:55Dazzling, showy,
0:06:55 > 0:06:57entirely lacking in substance.
0:06:57 > 0:06:59Just like a firework.
0:07:01 > 0:07:04Whistler struck back, suing Ruskin.
0:07:05 > 0:07:07It was the art trial of the century,
0:07:07 > 0:07:11and in its wake, Sickert fell under Whistler's spell.
0:07:11 > 0:07:15The young artist had enrolled at the Slade School of Art in 1881,
0:07:15 > 0:07:18but found the academic approach there stifling.
0:07:20 > 0:07:22He abandoned his art school education
0:07:22 > 0:07:24and became Whistler's apprentice.
0:07:27 > 0:07:31Sickert's early work proves that he gleaned much from Whistler -
0:07:31 > 0:07:34low-toned palette, spare composition,
0:07:34 > 0:07:36assured handling of colour.
0:07:38 > 0:07:41He was happy to call Whistler "the Master"...
0:07:41 > 0:07:43for the time being, at least.
0:07:52 > 0:07:55Sickert married Ellen Cobden in 1885.
0:07:55 > 0:07:59They honeymooned in Dieppe on the Normandy coast.
0:08:00 > 0:08:03The seaside town was a la mode for French artists.
0:08:04 > 0:08:07That summer, Sickert made a friend for life -
0:08:07 > 0:08:11writer and painter Jacques-Emile Blanche.
0:08:12 > 0:08:15Sickert quickly adopted the uniform.
0:08:15 > 0:08:19He sported a new pointed beard.
0:08:21 > 0:08:24It was here in Dieppe in the summer of 1885
0:08:24 > 0:08:27that Sickert renewed his acquaintance with Edgar Degas,
0:08:27 > 0:08:31the great French painter of modern life.
0:08:31 > 0:08:35The painter of weary ballerinas, of tired prostitutes,
0:08:35 > 0:08:42of out-of-the-corner-of-your-eye views of Parisian street scenes.
0:08:42 > 0:08:45And I think Sickert really...
0:08:45 > 0:08:48almost fell in love with Degas
0:08:48 > 0:08:54and decided to become a painter of modern life in his own way.
0:08:54 > 0:08:59And in a sense, I think the conversation that he began
0:08:59 > 0:09:04that year with Degas, he continued it right until the end of his life.
0:09:04 > 0:09:07No painter influenced him more than Degas.
0:09:13 > 0:09:17Sickert might have been inspired by Degas and Impressionism,
0:09:17 > 0:09:19but he mapped new, uncharted territory.
0:09:22 > 0:09:24The Red Shop.
0:09:24 > 0:09:26A humdrum fragment of modern life.
0:09:27 > 0:09:31The shop front glows enigmatically, but remains inscrutable.
0:09:33 > 0:09:37The facade of Saint Jacques interrogated again and again.
0:09:38 > 0:09:41There's no relish in the play of light and shade.
0:09:41 > 0:09:43Just mute architecture.
0:09:45 > 0:09:48This is L'Hotel Royal, sickly pallor,
0:09:48 > 0:09:51figures as blank-faced as the edifice.
0:09:51 > 0:09:56Impressionist subjects, shot through with a modern sense of the uncanny.
0:09:56 > 0:09:58Sickert was the first existential painter,
0:09:58 > 0:10:00the painter of the non-event.
0:10:03 > 0:10:06Dieppe would be one of many homes to the wandering Sickert,
0:10:06 > 0:10:10but his way of seeing the world never wavered.
0:10:11 > 0:10:15He and his new wife returned to London in the autumn of 1885.
0:10:22 > 0:10:24Victorian Britain dealt in certainties -
0:10:24 > 0:10:28empire, Christian morality, strict social boundaries.
0:10:30 > 0:10:34But towards the end of the century, all that seemed to be in jeopardy.
0:10:36 > 0:10:39Most British artists attempted to shore up
0:10:39 > 0:10:42crumbling certainties - painting a mythic past,
0:10:42 > 0:10:44or a rose-tinted present.
0:10:50 > 0:10:51Sickert looked elsewhere.
0:10:51 > 0:10:54He looked in the grubbiest of corners.
0:11:00 > 0:11:03An artificial paradise fuelled by cheap booze
0:11:03 > 0:11:07and the promise of sex, a working-class audience,
0:11:07 > 0:11:09some of them heckling, some of them drunk,
0:11:09 > 0:11:11most of them having a good time.
0:11:11 > 0:11:13Sickert spent night after night
0:11:13 > 0:11:17in the cheap seats of London's music halls, taking it all in.
0:11:17 > 0:11:22For a painter interested in modern life, this was the perfect subject.
0:11:26 > 0:11:30Sickert's music hall is a place of artificial dreams and enchantments.
0:11:33 > 0:11:37The Lion Comique, full of life, frozen in song.
0:11:37 > 0:11:41He seems about to levitate above the impossible world of the back cloth.
0:11:43 > 0:11:45Katie Lawrence -
0:11:45 > 0:11:49sherbet lemon siren beguiling her audience in a darkened theatre.
0:11:52 > 0:11:55Sickert never lets us forget it's just a performance -
0:11:55 > 0:11:58the mask is always about to drop.
0:12:02 > 0:12:06The most disconcerting of Sickert's early music hall paintings
0:12:06 > 0:12:08is this one.
0:12:08 > 0:12:11The composition at first sight is thoroughly baffling.
0:12:11 > 0:12:14Here in the foreground, we see the music hall audience
0:12:14 > 0:12:18truncated to just three heads in profile.
0:12:18 > 0:12:21And behind them, rather than in front of them,
0:12:21 > 0:12:25we see the performer, the turn, a young girl, in her red dress.
0:12:25 > 0:12:28Why are they not connected to each other?
0:12:28 > 0:12:29Why are they not looking at her?
0:12:29 > 0:12:32Ah! Sickert gives us a clue here -
0:12:32 > 0:12:35the gilt frame of a mirror.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38He's framed the composition so that WE see her
0:12:38 > 0:12:42from the side in a mirror - they're actually looking at her.
0:12:42 > 0:12:44Why should he have done it like that?
0:12:44 > 0:12:48Because, I think, the dislocation that he's effected
0:12:48 > 0:12:52to him expresses the emotional heart of the scene.
0:12:52 > 0:12:56These three old faces - oblivious, bored,
0:12:56 > 0:12:58they almost don't seem to have eyes -
0:12:58 > 0:13:01they're just not connecting with the young girl
0:13:01 > 0:13:03who's almost like a marionette.
0:13:03 > 0:13:05Her mouth is half open.
0:13:05 > 0:13:11Look at her rather pathetic left white arm down by her side,
0:13:11 > 0:13:15she's groaning almost rather than singing.
0:13:15 > 0:13:20And he's suffused the scene with this glowing, bright,
0:13:20 > 0:13:22sinister vermillion
0:13:22 > 0:13:25as if to turn it into an inferno.
0:13:25 > 0:13:29Like some kind of modern, gaslit hell,
0:13:29 > 0:13:33and it feels very much like the premonition of a tragedy.
0:13:44 > 0:13:48Sickert is the main psychological critic of London.
0:13:48 > 0:13:52In his painting, the city is a place of endless reinvention
0:13:52 > 0:13:57and Sickert, above anybody else, is the painter of reinvention.
0:13:59 > 0:14:03Iain Sinclair, himself a piercing chronicler of London,
0:14:03 > 0:14:06is compelled by the theatricality
0:14:06 > 0:14:08that pervades Sickert's life and art.
0:14:10 > 0:14:13I think the world that Sickert's invading
0:14:13 > 0:14:18as a kind of alien in that period of the 1880s, 1890s,
0:14:18 > 0:14:23is really a moment when the imperial certainties are beginning to dissolve
0:14:23 > 0:14:27in interesting ways, which allows him to slip between the cracks,
0:14:27 > 0:14:31and play games with identity, to turn up in all sorts of different ways.
0:14:31 > 0:14:34And in a sense, the theatre, the music hall,
0:14:34 > 0:14:37is a perfect venue for that.
0:14:37 > 0:14:42He's nominating these spaces as somewhere to interrogate
0:14:42 > 0:14:46the dramas that are going on in the city at large.
0:14:47 > 0:14:50The Londoners who've drifted into this space
0:14:50 > 0:14:52are like in the Egyptian Book Of The Dead -
0:14:52 > 0:14:55they're there, and they're braying,
0:14:55 > 0:15:01they're either angry, excited, bobbing about in some strange way,
0:15:01 > 0:15:05they relate to the earlier London mobs who went to trials
0:15:05 > 0:15:07and wanted to see people hanged
0:15:07 > 0:15:11and torn to pieces and burnt in Smithfield.
0:15:11 > 0:15:13It's that kind of sense.
0:15:13 > 0:15:16Except that the theatre where it now happens is a music hall.
0:15:16 > 0:15:20So he gets that, which is the savagery of the imperial city.
0:15:21 > 0:15:25I think certain painters have that ability
0:15:25 > 0:15:28to be anticipating the future,
0:15:28 > 0:15:30and inevitably the horror
0:15:30 > 0:15:32is going to come at the end.
0:15:32 > 0:15:35It's Conrad again, it's "the horror, the horror".
0:15:35 > 0:15:38And Eliot again, the dead amongst us.
0:15:38 > 0:15:40Who would have thought so many had been undone?
0:15:40 > 0:15:44All of those feelings are there in these paintings.
0:15:48 > 0:15:49Before the end of the 19th century,
0:15:49 > 0:15:54Sickert had established himself as a fiercely original painter.
0:15:54 > 0:15:56It caused trouble with his old mentor Whistler,
0:15:56 > 0:15:58who hated an upstart.
0:15:58 > 0:16:01Irritation on both sides soon boiled over.
0:16:03 > 0:16:06Sickert used his column in The Speaker to fire a volley
0:16:06 > 0:16:09at one of Whistler's most pompous and boring acolytes,
0:16:09 > 0:16:11a man named Joseph Pennell.
0:16:11 > 0:16:14Pennell had produced a series of lithographs,
0:16:14 > 0:16:17which, Sickert said, weren't true lithographs.
0:16:17 > 0:16:20It was a snide attack and it was a technicality.
0:16:20 > 0:16:22But it misfired.
0:16:22 > 0:16:25Egged on by Whistler, Pennell took Sickert to court
0:16:25 > 0:16:28and won £50 in damages.
0:16:28 > 0:16:33Whistler's response? "Enemy met and destroyed - Sickert in ambulance."
0:16:35 > 0:16:37Sickert put a brave face on it.
0:16:37 > 0:16:41In 1895, he sailed for the Continent.
0:16:58 > 0:17:02In Venice, Ellen discovered a letter from his mistress, Ada.
0:17:03 > 0:17:04The artist's response?
0:17:04 > 0:17:07To start another affair.
0:17:09 > 0:17:12Sickert claimed to be a passionate believer in marriage,
0:17:12 > 0:17:16although he also seems to have been pathologically unfaithful.
0:17:16 > 0:17:18And as news filtered through to Venice
0:17:18 > 0:17:22of yet more of his infidelities, he confessed to Ellen
0:17:22 > 0:17:25that he'd lived the life of an adulterer,
0:17:25 > 0:17:28and couldn't imagine living any other.
0:17:28 > 0:17:31I wonder if he was alive to the irony
0:17:31 > 0:17:33that his marriage was falling apart
0:17:33 > 0:17:36in the city of perpetual disintegration.
0:17:40 > 0:17:44By September 1896, Sickert's marriage to Ellen was over.
0:17:45 > 0:17:48The artist was unsurprised, but devastated.
0:17:49 > 0:17:53The mask momentarily slipped in a self-portrait.
0:17:54 > 0:17:56He looks wearily over his shoulder,
0:17:56 > 0:17:59as if hounded, or haunted, by his past.
0:18:00 > 0:18:06Red-rimmed eyes, face both made and destroyed by thick brushstrokes.
0:18:08 > 0:18:12Startlingly modern, painted in 1896.
0:18:15 > 0:18:19Sickert was alone in Venice, and found a convenient refuge -
0:18:19 > 0:18:20his work.
0:18:22 > 0:18:25When Sickert came to Venice, he knew very well that he was following
0:18:25 > 0:18:29in the footsteps of some of the most famous painters who'd ever lived -
0:18:29 > 0:18:31Canaletto, Turner, Monet -
0:18:31 > 0:18:34and you might have expected him to steer clear
0:18:34 > 0:18:37of the scenes they'd made famous, but he didn't.
0:18:37 > 0:18:41He painted the Grand Canal, he painted the facade of St Mark's.
0:18:41 > 0:18:45It's as if he knew that if he painted what he saw
0:18:45 > 0:18:48filtered through his sensibility,
0:18:48 > 0:18:50something new and different would emerge.
0:18:50 > 0:18:54And he was right - Sickert's Venice is unlike any other.
0:19:01 > 0:19:04The facade of St Mark's, viewed square on.
0:19:06 > 0:19:08Same motif, same framing,
0:19:08 > 0:19:11by day, or beneath a red sky at night.
0:19:13 > 0:19:18The facade - designed to look splendid, now ragged and worn -
0:19:18 > 0:19:20failing to hide the reality.
0:19:22 > 0:19:26Venice was a piece of failed theatre, barely afloat.
0:19:27 > 0:19:29Another turn gone sour.
0:19:41 > 0:19:44Sickert's Venetian views sold well.
0:19:45 > 0:19:49But, by 1903, the artist had painted every drowned inch
0:19:49 > 0:19:52of "Kilburn-in-the-Sea", as he liked to call Venice.
0:19:54 > 0:19:56Bad weather forced him indoors,
0:19:56 > 0:19:59behind the crumbling walls lapped by water,
0:19:59 > 0:20:04where the glamorous myth of Venice was belied by whorehouse reality.
0:20:06 > 0:20:09A number of prostitutes became his sitters in Venice.
0:20:09 > 0:20:13They modelled for him in his lodgings at the Calle dei Frati.
0:20:13 > 0:20:15He may also have paid them to sleep with him.
0:20:15 > 0:20:17He confessed to Jacques-Emile Blanche
0:20:17 > 0:20:20that he'd caught the clap in Venice.
0:20:20 > 0:20:23"Now...", he wrote rather bitterly, "..now I'm a grown-up."
0:20:25 > 0:20:30La Giuseppina - bird's nest perched on her head,
0:20:30 > 0:20:33wild eyes, pained expression.
0:20:34 > 0:20:39Her mother, Mamma Mia Poveretta - haggard and vacant,
0:20:39 > 0:20:42a husk where there was once life.
0:20:44 > 0:20:47Raw, unvarnished images of women.
0:20:47 > 0:20:49Transcriptions of tough lives.
0:20:52 > 0:20:55Sickert had spent ten years on the Continent,
0:20:55 > 0:20:59away from London and its rather provincial art world.
0:20:59 > 0:21:04He'd found his own places - above all, Dieppe and Venice -
0:21:04 > 0:21:08his own subjects, and his own style of painting.
0:21:08 > 0:21:11Now, in 1905, he was ready to return.
0:21:12 > 0:21:16Sickert set sail for Britain, in no mood for settling down.
0:21:23 > 0:21:25To him, fashionable London reeked
0:21:25 > 0:21:28of the stale whiff of the establishment.
0:21:32 > 0:21:34So Sickert rented rooms not in Chelsea,
0:21:34 > 0:21:37but around Fitzroy Street and Camden Town -
0:21:37 > 0:21:39the wrong side of the tracks.
0:21:42 > 0:21:44Prostitutes were hired as models.
0:21:46 > 0:21:50Foxed mirrors, cheap dressers, metal bedsteads.
0:21:51 > 0:21:53His drab lodgings supplied the props.
0:21:55 > 0:21:57Sickert stage-managed a series of pictures,
0:21:57 > 0:22:03the Camden Town nudes, that laid bare the underbelly of British life.
0:22:05 > 0:22:09A dingy backend, soiled sheets, bilious light.
0:22:09 > 0:22:13A woman sinking into a soft mattress,
0:22:13 > 0:22:15devoured by the tools of her own trade.
0:22:17 > 0:22:20Dawn, Camden Town.
0:22:20 > 0:22:21Another iron bedstead.
0:22:23 > 0:22:27Naked woman, clothed man crumpled at the foot of the bed.
0:22:27 > 0:22:32Modern life divested, a tawdry reality laid bare.
0:22:36 > 0:22:40If you want to understand just how daring and original Sickert was
0:22:40 > 0:22:44as a painter of the human form, above all, a painter of the nude,
0:22:44 > 0:22:47it's a good idea to compare him with his contemporaries.
0:22:47 > 0:22:52This is a picture by Lawrence Alma-Tadema done in 1909.
0:22:52 > 0:22:57Alma-Tadema was the master of the tasteful classical nude.
0:22:57 > 0:23:00And here we see two rather English-looking girls
0:23:00 > 0:23:06titillatingly disporting themselves in a pool of Pompeiian water.
0:23:09 > 0:23:12A very different pond over here.
0:23:12 > 0:23:16This is Sickert's La Hollandaise.
0:23:16 > 0:23:21A woman, a naked woman, in her bed.
0:23:21 > 0:23:25There's nothing idealised, remote, fantastical, imaginary
0:23:25 > 0:23:29about this body - it's a real person.
0:23:29 > 0:23:34I see this as a representation of all of us.
0:23:34 > 0:23:38The human animal alone,
0:23:38 > 0:23:42caged within the basic parameters of life -
0:23:42 > 0:23:44in this case, the bed.
0:23:44 > 0:23:49It's a picture of an ungainly woman being herself in her own space,
0:23:49 > 0:23:52in her own time, and no-one else in Britain had painted that.
0:23:59 > 0:24:03Human beings are such strange, complex creatures.
0:24:03 > 0:24:06There is a feeling that we are not quite at ease with ourselves
0:24:06 > 0:24:08in our animal skin.
0:24:11 > 0:24:15That whether we're dressed or nude,
0:24:15 > 0:24:18there's a sense of awkwardness about us
0:24:18 > 0:24:20and I think this is something
0:24:20 > 0:24:25that Sickert captures very, very tenderly.
0:24:29 > 0:24:33Artist Celia Paul's fascination with Sickert goes back
0:24:33 > 0:24:36to her time at the Slade School of Art in the mid '70s.
0:24:37 > 0:24:40She paints only sitters she knows intimately,
0:24:40 > 0:24:43mostly women, in her home and studio in central London.
0:24:46 > 0:24:50I think there is a compassion in the way he portrays women.
0:24:51 > 0:24:53An intimacy.
0:24:53 > 0:24:56There's a real sense of his charm through her.
0:24:56 > 0:25:00I mean, these women are delighted to be sitting for him.
0:25:00 > 0:25:03You get the feeling that they actually
0:25:03 > 0:25:05love being looked at by him.
0:25:07 > 0:25:12They're erotic feelings, in the best sense of the word.
0:25:12 > 0:25:16Even though there's a kind of intimate drama
0:25:16 > 0:25:19in all of the interiors,
0:25:19 > 0:25:24there is a kind of really quite desolate, lonely feeling.
0:25:24 > 0:25:27I sort of imagine him looking in through the window
0:25:27 > 0:25:31at something that he hasn't got,
0:25:31 > 0:25:35and he's decided obviously that this, a domestic life,
0:25:35 > 0:25:39is probably something that may be too complicated for him.
0:25:41 > 0:25:46Sickert in his 40s was the oldest enfant terrible on the block.
0:25:46 > 0:25:49He preferred The Juvenile Lead and wrote a manifesto
0:25:49 > 0:25:53for his own dirty realism with typical gusto.
0:25:54 > 0:25:57"The more our art is serious, the more will it tend to avoid
0:25:57 > 0:26:00"the drawing-room and stick to the kitchen.
0:26:00 > 0:26:03"The plastic arts are gross arts,
0:26:03 > 0:26:06"dealing joyously with gross material facts.
0:26:06 > 0:26:10"While they will flourish in the scullery, or on the dunghill,
0:26:10 > 0:26:13"they fade at a breath from the drawing-room."
0:26:18 > 0:26:22Sickert, in his latest incarnation, didn't just rattle teacups,
0:26:22 > 0:26:24he smashed them to smithereens.
0:26:24 > 0:26:29"Worse than slum art, worse than prostitution," wrote one critic.
0:26:29 > 0:26:33And Sickert, well, he revelled in the furore -
0:26:33 > 0:26:36all publicity being good publicity.
0:26:36 > 0:26:38And no subject was off-limits.
0:26:43 > 0:26:47Sickert's Camden Town was drab and grimy,
0:26:47 > 0:26:49home to the migrant workforce of navvies
0:26:49 > 0:26:54responsible for building most of north London's network of railways.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57It wasn't a kind place and it could be a violent one.
0:26:57 > 0:27:01In the early hours of the morning of the 12th September 1907,
0:27:01 > 0:27:04the body of Emily Dimmock,
0:27:04 > 0:27:08a local prostitute, was found sprawled on her bed.
0:27:08 > 0:27:12Her throat had been cut so deeply her head had almost been severed.
0:27:12 > 0:27:15There was blood on the sheets, blood on the floor,
0:27:15 > 0:27:20more blood in the washbasin near the bed and on her petticoat
0:27:20 > 0:27:24which the murderer had used to wipe his hands clean
0:27:24 > 0:27:26after committing the killing.
0:27:26 > 0:27:32It was a sad and horrible end to a young woman's life,
0:27:32 > 0:27:34which the press instantly banner headlined,
0:27:34 > 0:27:36"The Camden Town Murder".
0:27:41 > 0:27:45Sickert was gripped by the lurid press coverage of the crime,
0:27:45 > 0:27:47and as he said years later,
0:27:47 > 0:27:49"Murder is as good a subject as any other."
0:27:59 > 0:28:03This is one of Sickert's most daring and ambitious pictures -
0:28:03 > 0:28:06a small interior, but what does it shows us?
0:28:06 > 0:28:09Well, we see a naked woman,
0:28:09 > 0:28:14or, more precisely, we see half a naked woman lying on a bed.
0:28:14 > 0:28:17Beside her is a man,
0:28:17 > 0:28:20but he's almost a shadow, a smear,
0:28:20 > 0:28:23he's totally indeterminate.
0:28:23 > 0:28:25You can't see his face, his features.
0:28:27 > 0:28:29The picture is a puzzle.
0:28:29 > 0:28:34And as if to play with his audience's narrative expectations,
0:28:34 > 0:28:38Sickert exhibited it under no less than three different titles.
0:28:38 > 0:28:41The first time, he simply called it Summer Afternoon.
0:28:41 > 0:28:46Second time around, borrowing a phrase from a music hall song,
0:28:46 > 0:28:49which possibly alludes to prostitution -
0:28:49 > 0:28:51What Shall We Do About The Rent?
0:28:51 > 0:28:55And last of all, he exhibited it with a group of other pictures
0:28:55 > 0:28:58under the umbrella title The Camden Town Murder.
0:28:58 > 0:29:02And I think the important thing about all of those three titles
0:29:02 > 0:29:04is that none of them fits.
0:29:05 > 0:29:08How can it possibly be the Camden Town Murder?
0:29:08 > 0:29:11Yes, there's a basin on the table behind,
0:29:11 > 0:29:13but there's no sign of a weapon.
0:29:13 > 0:29:18There's no blood, there's no evidence that the woman is dead.
0:29:18 > 0:29:19I think...
0:29:19 > 0:29:24I think that what Sickert's actually attempted in this picture
0:29:24 > 0:29:29is to paint a fragment of modern reality
0:29:29 > 0:29:33that seems as full of doubt and uncertainty
0:29:33 > 0:29:37as he felt reality at every moment to be.
0:29:39 > 0:29:43He's painting the way in which existence is perpetually a mystery
0:29:43 > 0:29:45and he wants to create a picture
0:29:45 > 0:29:49that is as perpetually mysterious as life itself.
0:29:52 > 0:29:55The Camden Town Murder pictures remain controversial
0:29:55 > 0:29:57and they've lent weight to the fantasy
0:29:57 > 0:30:02that Sickert wielded both palette knife and killer's blade.
0:30:13 > 0:30:17When he was walking home one evening from a music hall,
0:30:17 > 0:30:19and he recounted how some girls
0:30:19 > 0:30:21who were in the street saw him
0:30:21 > 0:30:25coming along and ran away from him shouting, "It's Jack the Ripper!
0:30:25 > 0:30:26"It's Jack the Ripper."
0:30:31 > 0:30:34It wasn't until after his death that Sickert was accused of the murder
0:30:34 > 0:30:38of 11 prostitutes in the grim Victorian slums of Whitechapel.
0:30:43 > 0:30:45Matthew Sturgis pored over the case -
0:30:45 > 0:30:49based mostly on the sinister mood of Sickert's pictures -
0:30:49 > 0:30:52when writing his biography of the artist.
0:30:52 > 0:30:55Most recently, we've had the book of Patricia Cornwell,
0:30:55 > 0:30:58who convinced herself from staring very hard
0:30:58 > 0:31:00at some of Sickert's pictures,
0:31:00 > 0:31:03that he was a crazed, woman-hating psychopath.
0:31:05 > 0:31:09But, for much of that late summer of 1888, he was away,
0:31:09 > 0:31:11not just in Dieppe in France,
0:31:11 > 0:31:14but along the coast from Dieppe, in Normandy,
0:31:14 > 0:31:16at Saint Valery en Caux.
0:31:16 > 0:31:19He can be pinpointed to that little seaside town
0:31:19 > 0:31:22on the night before one of the murders,
0:31:22 > 0:31:27so it's inconceivable that he could have had anything to do with them.
0:31:29 > 0:31:31He spent his life assuming different guises,
0:31:31 > 0:31:36and playing different roles, and he would be very amused and delighted
0:31:36 > 0:31:41to find that he'd been cast in such a glamorous part as Jack the Ripper.
0:31:44 > 0:31:48In 1910, an exhibition of continental works in London
0:31:48 > 0:31:51pointed towards a different course for modern art.
0:31:55 > 0:31:59Roger Fry's Manet And The Post-Impressionists exhibition.
0:32:01 > 0:32:05Britain was rocked by "The Art Quake of 1910",
0:32:05 > 0:32:06as it came to be known.
0:32:07 > 0:32:09Everyone, that is, except for Sickert.
0:32:11 > 0:32:15Sickert was unmoved by the furore. He already knew all about
0:32:15 > 0:32:19the post-impressionists and he was distinctly 'un-post-impressed'.
0:32:19 > 0:32:23He wrote a scathing review of the exhibition
0:32:23 > 0:32:26in which he had a go at Van Gogh.
0:32:26 > 0:32:30He simply quoted Voltaire on the nature of madness.
0:32:30 > 0:32:35Matisse, he said, was guilty of all the worst art school tricks.
0:32:35 > 0:32:39- And Picasso... - CHUCKLING:- Little did he know!
0:32:39 > 0:32:42Picasso, Sickert said,
0:32:42 > 0:32:46"is a quite accomplished sort of minor international painter."
0:32:47 > 0:32:50Now, why did the exhibition get Sickert's goat
0:32:50 > 0:32:51in the way that it did?
0:32:51 > 0:32:54Up until now, he had been a follower, a supporter of the new,
0:32:54 > 0:32:56unlike most of his English contemporaries.
0:32:56 > 0:32:58But I think, at this point,
0:32:58 > 0:33:01he decided to draw a line in the sand.
0:33:01 > 0:33:05He could see that where these painters were taking modern art
0:33:05 > 0:33:11was away, into abstraction, into pure form, into pure imagination.
0:33:11 > 0:33:13He felt there was a danger that painting
0:33:13 > 0:33:15could lose touch with the only things that
0:33:15 > 0:33:19really mattered to him - human life, human stories.
0:33:25 > 0:33:27But Fry's exhibition did prove that modern art was
0:33:27 > 0:33:29evolving at an ever-increasing pace.
0:33:30 > 0:33:34Sickert was pragmatic. If there were to be changes,
0:33:34 > 0:33:35best to have a say in them.
0:33:37 > 0:33:40With Harold Gilman and Spencer Gore,
0:33:40 > 0:33:43a new exhibiting society was set up -
0:33:43 > 0:33:45The Camden Town Group.
0:33:45 > 0:33:49And in June 1911, they held their first exhibition.
0:33:50 > 0:33:54The style? Modern but not modernist.
0:33:55 > 0:33:581911 was certainly a busy year.
0:33:58 > 0:34:02One woman rejected his proposal of marriage, another jilted him
0:34:02 > 0:34:06at the altar in favour of a younger man, and then he reverted
0:34:06 > 0:34:09"quite justifiably", as he said, "to a previous engagement".
0:34:09 > 0:34:14He wired friends - "Marry Saturday, a certain Christine Angus.
0:34:14 > 0:34:17"Jeweller would not take wedding ring back."
0:34:22 > 0:34:24Christine had been a pupil at the art classes
0:34:24 > 0:34:26Sickert gave at his home in Camden.
0:34:28 > 0:34:31He was 51. She was 17 years his junior.
0:34:33 > 0:34:36He announced that she looked just like a pelican -
0:34:36 > 0:34:37a compliment, apparently.
0:34:39 > 0:34:42The artist's new happiness didn't alter his essentially
0:34:42 > 0:34:44melancholic view of modern life.
0:34:46 > 0:34:49He developed a new kind of suspended domestic narrative.
0:34:52 > 0:34:54A faceless man lurches off to the pub,
0:34:54 > 0:34:56leaving behind a disconsolate wife.
0:34:58 > 0:35:00Figures in doom-laden interiors,
0:35:00 > 0:35:03suffocated by fetid air.
0:35:15 > 0:35:19Sickert's titles are often decoys or diversions or tricks
0:35:19 > 0:35:22played on the audience, but in the case of this picture,
0:35:22 > 0:35:24I think he really meant the title.
0:35:24 > 0:35:26He called it Ennui, which is not quite
0:35:26 > 0:35:30the same in French as its English translation, "boredom".
0:35:30 > 0:35:36In French, ennui implies disgust, a kind of weariness with life,
0:35:36 > 0:35:39and that is what this picture seems to be all about.
0:35:39 > 0:35:44It shows us two figures in an interior,
0:35:44 > 0:35:47and although they're right next to each other,
0:35:47 > 0:35:50they seem to be miles apart.
0:35:50 > 0:35:52The man, slumped in his chair,
0:35:52 > 0:35:54wearing a suit that's seen better days,
0:35:54 > 0:35:57puffing at his cigar.
0:35:57 > 0:35:59He's got glassy eyes, he seems entirely
0:35:59 > 0:36:02cut off from the reality around him.
0:36:02 > 0:36:04Whereas the woman, slumped on the dresser,
0:36:04 > 0:36:09she stares at the wall almost like a wounded animal.
0:36:09 > 0:36:14Everything in the scene seems charged with bitter meaning.
0:36:14 > 0:36:18The glass, perhaps of gin, the booze on the shelf.
0:36:18 > 0:36:21But most telling of all, perhaps,
0:36:21 > 0:36:26is this hangover from late Victorian taste -
0:36:26 > 0:36:29some stuffed birds under a bell jar.
0:36:30 > 0:36:37This room, to me, feels like a kind of bell jar, an airless space
0:36:37 > 0:36:42in which two sad individuals are living out desiccated lives.
0:36:51 > 0:36:54In 1914, Sickert resigned from what had been
0:36:54 > 0:36:58the Camden Town Group, appalled by the inclusion of modernist artists.
0:37:00 > 0:37:04Feeling alienated and angry, he returned to France.
0:37:04 > 0:37:08He purchased a house in Envermeu, near his old haunt of Dieppe.
0:37:10 > 0:37:12In this idyllic location,
0:37:12 > 0:37:15the artist started another of his private battles.
0:37:17 > 0:37:20He painted this obelisk,
0:37:20 > 0:37:23with the rising plain behind,
0:37:23 > 0:37:26attempting to conquer the scene's complex perspective.
0:37:29 > 0:37:33As the great powers moved inexorably towards the Great War,
0:37:33 > 0:37:37Sickert turned his face away from the conflict.
0:37:37 > 0:37:39He knew he wouldn't be enlisted for fighting.
0:37:39 > 0:37:43And he came to this quiet corner of Normandy, not far from Dieppe,
0:37:43 > 0:37:47where he set about painting a weather-worn memorial
0:37:47 > 0:37:50to a long-forgotten conflict,
0:37:50 > 0:37:53a battle fought by Henry IV of France back in 1589.
0:37:54 > 0:37:57And when, on the 3rd of August 1914,
0:37:57 > 0:38:00Germany did finally declare war on France,
0:38:00 > 0:38:03what was Sickert's response?
0:38:03 > 0:38:05He simply turned back to his painting and said,
0:38:05 > 0:38:08"I can only fight one war at a time."
0:38:11 > 0:38:15The perspective Sickert wrestled with was moral, not merely spatial.
0:38:16 > 0:38:18The vainglory of kings set against
0:38:18 > 0:38:22the slow rhythms of nature, growth and harvest.
0:38:23 > 0:38:26The subtlest of anti-war pictures -
0:38:26 > 0:38:29a comment on the absurdity of a monument.
0:38:35 > 0:38:37Immediately after the outbreak of war,
0:38:37 > 0:38:42the Sickerts moved to a less remote location - a hotel in Dieppe.
0:38:44 > 0:38:46Sickert reported with amusement that he'd seen
0:38:46 > 0:38:51Lady Blanche Hozier camped out in an armchair by the port
0:38:51 > 0:38:55watching the British flee back home on steamers.
0:38:55 > 0:38:58"C'est la mere de Churchill," the locals whispered,
0:38:58 > 0:39:00"It's the mother of Churchill."
0:39:03 > 0:39:04Dieppe braced itself.
0:39:06 > 0:39:08In 1914, Sickert was also left distraught by the death
0:39:08 > 0:39:11of his first wife, Ellen.
0:39:11 > 0:39:12She bequeathed him nothing,
0:39:12 > 0:39:15having quietly bought his pictures all her life.
0:39:17 > 0:39:19Yet, despite private and public tumult,
0:39:19 > 0:39:21his creative life had never been better.
0:39:23 > 0:39:27"I suppose an eye for drawing is an eye for shooting," he wrote.
0:39:29 > 0:39:31When a German plane flew overhead,
0:39:31 > 0:39:34Sickert knew it was time to clear out, back to London.
0:39:44 > 0:39:48The artist's early war pictures are monumental in scale -
0:39:48 > 0:39:51deliberate fragments of the theatre of war.
0:39:52 > 0:39:55The Soldiers Of King Albert The Ready take aim,
0:39:55 > 0:39:58rifle's cut-off by Sickert's cropping.
0:39:59 > 0:40:01Modern warfare is mechanised,
0:40:01 > 0:40:06the enemy faceless - the killing happening elsewhere, out of sight.
0:40:09 > 0:40:11Sickert, however, sees the consequences.
0:40:14 > 0:40:18His favourite motif, the iron bedstead, put to a different use -
0:40:18 > 0:40:21a nurse tucking up a wounded soldier.
0:40:24 > 0:40:29Even Sickert's domestic interiors become charged with a new meaning.
0:40:29 > 0:40:33Girl playing a grand piano, soldier straining to hear her tune.
0:40:35 > 0:40:39Tipperary - a title changes everything -
0:40:39 > 0:40:41the song on every soldier's lips
0:40:41 > 0:40:43as they marched off to war,
0:40:43 > 0:40:46and then later at the front, yearning for home.
0:40:48 > 0:40:54But there's not much flag waving going on, just a dreadful stillness.
0:41:03 > 0:41:07During World War I, unable to travel to his beloved Dieppe,
0:41:07 > 0:41:09Sickert holidayed in Brighton.
0:41:12 > 0:41:18In the summer of 1915, Brighton was out of kilter, out of joint.
0:41:18 > 0:41:20A holiday town, but it didn't feel like it.
0:41:20 > 0:41:23There were no young men on the streets.
0:41:23 > 0:41:26Brighton Pavilion was being used as a temporary hospital
0:41:26 > 0:41:28for injured Indian soldiers.
0:41:28 > 0:41:32And on a clear day, you could actually hear the bombardments
0:41:32 > 0:41:35going on on the other side of the Channel.
0:41:35 > 0:41:38There was an ominous mood about the town
0:41:38 > 0:41:41and Sickert was the man to capture it.
0:41:44 > 0:41:47Sickert visited the open air theatre on the beach every night
0:41:47 > 0:41:50for five weeks, sketching the Pierrot theatre.
0:41:52 > 0:41:55Unlike the music hall, there was nothing risque about the show -
0:41:55 > 0:41:58this was wholesome family entertainment,
0:41:58 > 0:42:02that, it was hoped, would drown out the cacophony of war.
0:42:08 > 0:42:12If I had to prove to someone who had never heard of him
0:42:12 > 0:42:15that Walter Sickert was one of the great painters of the 20th century,
0:42:15 > 0:42:18and if I were allowed only one painting,
0:42:18 > 0:42:21this is the picture I'd choose.
0:42:21 > 0:42:25I think it's his masterpiece. Brighton Pierrots, 1915.
0:42:25 > 0:42:30Sickert self-deprecatingly described it as "a bit of all right",
0:42:30 > 0:42:32and I think it's more than that.
0:42:34 > 0:42:38A theatrical performance taking place outside,
0:42:38 > 0:42:43under artificial light, in Brighton in the early evening.
0:42:43 > 0:42:47Here's the stage. There's a line of Brighton houses.
0:42:47 > 0:42:52And behind it all this vast bruise of a sky that also
0:42:52 > 0:42:55looks like a conflagration, and I think it's Sickert's
0:42:55 > 0:43:00way of reminding us that, yes, war is taking place beyond this scene.
0:43:01 > 0:43:05Two performers, they look like automata,
0:43:05 > 0:43:08robots going through the motions of their turn.
0:43:08 > 0:43:14Look at the way in which also this one, he's had his face and his arms
0:43:14 > 0:43:19removed by the pictorial cropping of Sickert's composition.
0:43:21 > 0:43:24A mirror image of the real disfigurements
0:43:24 > 0:43:28and real dismemberments going on across the Channel.
0:43:28 > 0:43:30And the central figure of the painting, I think -
0:43:30 > 0:43:36look at the way the lines lead towards her - is this pierette,
0:43:36 > 0:43:41a faceless pierette in a pink polka-dot dress playing the piano.
0:43:43 > 0:43:49Is she the mad organ grinder to who's tune everyone must dance?
0:43:50 > 0:43:53He'd always been a brilliant painter of the passing show
0:43:53 > 0:43:56but this is the theatre of the absurd.
0:44:00 > 0:44:02In the immediate aftermath of World War I,
0:44:02 > 0:44:05Sickert resigned from his teaching posts.
0:44:06 > 0:44:09His position as an artist no longer certain,
0:44:09 > 0:44:13he, together with Christine, moved back to their home in Envermeu.
0:44:21 > 0:44:25By 1919, the artist was 59 years old.
0:44:25 > 0:44:27He saw this as his final move.
0:44:30 > 0:44:34The new serenity of Sickert's life was reflected in his art.
0:44:36 > 0:44:39He painted a series of still lives -
0:44:39 > 0:44:41simple produce.
0:44:43 > 0:44:45After the slaughter of World War I,
0:44:45 > 0:44:48he turned to the nourishment that sustains life.
0:44:51 > 0:44:53Shortly after moving into the Maison Mouton,
0:44:53 > 0:44:56Sickert's tranquillity was shattered.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01Christine lost her battle with tuberculosis,
0:45:01 > 0:45:04the illness that had plagued her throughout her life.
0:45:04 > 0:45:07She died on the 13th October 1920.
0:45:09 > 0:45:12Sickert felt as if he was "digesting granite".
0:45:13 > 0:45:18Embattled - all but destroyed by the loss of his young wife -
0:45:18 > 0:45:19he shaved his head.
0:45:28 > 0:45:31In 1922, he returned to a London full of what he called
0:45:31 > 0:45:35"palaeo-stuffers" - fossils from the Victorian age,
0:45:35 > 0:45:37and "neo-stinkers" -
0:45:37 > 0:45:41the new generation who had embraced the sharp edges of modernism.
0:45:43 > 0:45:46Sickert belonged in neither camp.
0:45:46 > 0:45:49The artist became increasingly dependent on another old pupil,
0:45:49 > 0:45:51Therese Lessore.
0:45:52 > 0:45:56In Brighton in 1926, he married "Lainey", as he liked to call her.
0:45:57 > 0:46:01The same year, Sickert suffered a serious breakdown in his health.
0:46:11 > 0:46:13Sickert proved indomitable.
0:46:13 > 0:46:18He emerged from his depression in an entirely new guise, and as if to
0:46:18 > 0:46:22mark his determination to reinvent himself, he changed his name.
0:46:22 > 0:46:27He dropped Walter and called himself Richard Sickert from now on.
0:46:27 > 0:46:33The final phase of his work would be marked by bold experimentation
0:46:33 > 0:46:35and surprising new developments.
0:46:40 > 0:46:41Almost without exception,
0:46:41 > 0:46:45Sickert used only photographic sources for the rest of his life.
0:46:47 > 0:46:50Photography, according to the artist, was like alcohol -
0:46:50 > 0:46:53only to be used by those who don't need it.
0:46:56 > 0:46:58And for Sickert, it was never a prop.
0:47:00 > 0:47:03Snap taken. Film developed.
0:47:03 > 0:47:07Photo selected, cropped and squared up onto canvas.
0:47:08 > 0:47:10The process may have been mechanical,
0:47:10 > 0:47:12but the idea was revolutionary.
0:47:17 > 0:47:21Sickert marked his resurrection with a trio of biblical self-portraits.
0:47:25 > 0:47:28The Servant Of Abraham -
0:47:28 > 0:47:31the artist's head threatens to burst out of the frame.
0:47:32 > 0:47:35Like a small fragment of a colossal picture.
0:47:37 > 0:47:40Lazarus Breaks His Fast, of 1927 -
0:47:40 > 0:47:45craving food after his resurrection, consumed by his appetites.
0:47:48 > 0:47:51Finally, The Raising Of Lazarus,
0:47:51 > 0:47:52on a monumental scale.
0:47:54 > 0:47:57A professional photographer was hired.
0:47:57 > 0:47:59A mannequin was shrouded by an undertaker.
0:48:01 > 0:48:04This time, Sickert takes on the role of Christ,
0:48:04 > 0:48:07breathing life back into Lazarus.
0:48:08 > 0:48:12The composition is impossible - Lazarus suspended mid-air,
0:48:12 > 0:48:15Christ levitating above him.
0:48:15 > 0:48:17More Frankenstein than New Testament.
0:48:20 > 0:48:22The picture was triumphantly received
0:48:22 > 0:48:25when exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1932.
0:48:27 > 0:48:29Sickert was now, according to a headline,
0:48:29 > 0:48:31"Our Greatest Living Painter".
0:48:38 > 0:48:40In January the following year,
0:48:40 > 0:48:44Germany's own 'resurrector' became Chancellor.
0:48:44 > 0:48:46Hitler's aim?
0:48:46 > 0:48:50To raise his nation back from the dead. Storm clouds were gathering.
0:49:01 > 0:49:04Throughout the '30s, Sickert produced a series of pictures
0:49:04 > 0:49:08that seemed to yearn for an England long gone.
0:49:10 > 0:49:13The artist faithfully copied, or transcribed,
0:49:13 > 0:49:16Victorian illustrations from the magazines of his youth.
0:49:19 > 0:49:22Some thought Sickert's pictures sentimental, even idiotic.
0:49:25 > 0:49:29But he breathed new life into dead images with a garish palette.
0:49:29 > 0:49:32The English Echoes are not an indication
0:49:32 > 0:49:34of Sickert's failing powers,
0:49:34 > 0:49:37as is being increasingly recognised today.
0:49:41 > 0:49:48I just thought that the "Echo" was a great word to describe
0:49:48 > 0:49:50something that is fading away.
0:49:50 > 0:49:53I experienced it, but as time goes by,
0:49:53 > 0:49:56it just becomes a nostalgic reflection.
0:50:00 > 0:50:03Like Sickert, artist Keith Coventry turns to found images
0:50:03 > 0:50:06and the art of the past for the sources of his work.
0:50:08 > 0:50:09He produced his own series,
0:50:09 > 0:50:13The Echoes Of Albany, to document the time he spent
0:50:13 > 0:50:17living in the exclusive Mayfair apartment block of the same name.
0:50:18 > 0:50:21Sickert was accused of being nostalgic
0:50:21 > 0:50:26when he painted the Echoes, but, in a way, the irony is that,
0:50:26 > 0:50:31out of that maybe-nostalgic looking back at the past,
0:50:31 > 0:50:35he created what I think is some of the most modern pictures.
0:50:37 > 0:50:38By squaring up,
0:50:38 > 0:50:42by faithfully reproducing what was in every square...
0:50:43 > 0:50:45..it makes the painting more abstract
0:50:45 > 0:50:47because he's only looking at it
0:50:47 > 0:50:49one square at a time.
0:50:50 > 0:50:54And so, because of that, you get an incredible two-dimensionality.
0:50:56 > 0:50:59I just think that risk-taking element and the idea
0:50:59 > 0:51:05of appropriation, which is something that we seem to think is
0:51:05 > 0:51:07a very modern thing,
0:51:07 > 0:51:12but for Sickert, it was really, back in 1930,
0:51:12 > 0:51:14it must have seemed quite shocking.
0:51:24 > 0:51:26During the early '30s,
0:51:26 > 0:51:29the spectacle of flight captured the public imagination.
0:51:32 > 0:51:35And Amelia Earhart, the first woman to complete a solo crossing
0:51:35 > 0:51:38of the Atlantic, was front page news.
0:51:40 > 0:51:44The Daily Sketch celebrated her triumphant arrival in London.
0:51:48 > 0:51:51Sickert based the picture on a press photograph
0:51:51 > 0:51:53of Miss Earhart's arrival,
0:51:53 > 0:51:55and he painted it so fast that,
0:51:55 > 0:51:58within a week of the publication of that newspaper,
0:51:58 > 0:52:00his picture was on display.
0:52:00 > 0:52:03Typical late Sickert marketing.
0:52:05 > 0:52:08Here they are, the hard-bitten journos, in their trench coats and
0:52:08 > 0:52:12their trilbies, braving the rain, the English weather, the grey sky.
0:52:12 > 0:52:15There's the wing of the aeroplane.
0:52:15 > 0:52:18But where's Amelia Earhart herself?
0:52:18 > 0:52:20You have to struggle to find her.
0:52:20 > 0:52:24Sickert's chosen, as his template,
0:52:24 > 0:52:27the picture in which her image was most occluded and obscured.
0:52:27 > 0:52:30There she is. But you have to look to find her.
0:52:30 > 0:52:36This little, ghostly profile, framed right at the margin of the picture.
0:52:37 > 0:52:42I think he's painting very much ahead of his time.
0:52:42 > 0:52:46I think he's thinking about the nature of celebrity,
0:52:46 > 0:52:50the nature of global fame in this world of the new mass media,
0:52:50 > 0:52:52and what it does to a person.
0:52:53 > 0:52:57In a sense, you could say he's examining exactly the same
0:52:57 > 0:53:00phenomenon that Andy Warhol was looking at in his multiple
0:53:00 > 0:53:02Marilyn Monroe paintings of the 1960s,
0:53:02 > 0:53:05which were all about the way in which a person
0:53:05 > 0:53:09disappears into the multiple images of their fame,
0:53:09 > 0:53:13the way in which celebrity abolishes or annihilates the human being
0:53:13 > 0:53:16at its vortex, at its centre.
0:53:16 > 0:53:19And I think there's a kind of irony to this title,
0:53:19 > 0:53:21Miss Earhart's Arrival.
0:53:22 > 0:53:25Because what Sickert's saying is that,
0:53:25 > 0:53:30at the very moment that you arrive in terms of world fame,
0:53:30 > 0:53:32you actually begin to disappear.
0:53:41 > 0:53:45The artist as alchemist, his studio a workshop where the base matter
0:53:45 > 0:53:49of mass-produced images is transformed into gold.
0:53:52 > 0:53:56Sickert churned out his copies of copies of the physical world.
0:53:58 > 0:54:01And these "transcriptions", as he called them,
0:54:01 > 0:54:05were increasingly executed not by the artist himself,
0:54:05 > 0:54:07but by his wife, Therese.
0:54:09 > 0:54:13Uncannily prescient in style, their subjects also foretell
0:54:13 > 0:54:16the inevitable slide towards another World War.
0:54:19 > 0:54:22King Edward VIII, still in mourning for his dead father.
0:54:22 > 0:54:25The end of the old era,
0:54:25 > 0:54:27the next ushered in.
0:54:32 > 0:54:37But the king is frozen in motion, caught on the back foot,
0:54:37 > 0:54:41Britain pensive in the face of an uncertain future.
0:54:48 > 0:54:53In the same year, perhaps most prescient of all -
0:54:53 > 0:54:55Il Barone Aloisi...
0:54:55 > 0:54:59A dejected old man set against a flooded world.
0:55:01 > 0:55:04The Italian diplomat's glory days far behind him.
0:55:06 > 0:55:09Aloisi exits the conference after the collapse of talks
0:55:09 > 0:55:11on the invasion of Abyssinia.
0:55:14 > 0:55:17An event that paved the way for World War II.
0:55:20 > 0:55:23Sickert knew that the writing was on the wall.
0:55:23 > 0:55:26He taught none other than Winston Churchill to paint.
0:55:27 > 0:55:31Years later, when the Sickerts found themselves hard up,
0:55:31 > 0:55:33the politician would repay the favour,
0:55:33 > 0:55:36arranging to have his old friend's pension supplemented.
0:55:41 > 0:55:44The Sickerts retired to Bathampton in 1938.
0:55:46 > 0:55:49He painted the view from his window, from a photograph, of course.
0:55:50 > 0:55:56# Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles
0:55:56 > 0:56:01# Uber alles in der Welt... #
0:56:01 > 0:56:06As the mood darkened, Sickert deployed his own increasingly black sense of humour.
0:56:06 > 0:56:09He sang Deutschland Uber Alles in the bath tub,
0:56:09 > 0:56:12within earshot of his painting students.
0:56:12 > 0:56:15His opinions on fascism ran typically against the grain -
0:56:15 > 0:56:19he claimed to approve of the Italian invasion of Abyssinia and
0:56:19 > 0:56:25he sent a letter to Hitler himself offering to teach him how to paint.
0:56:25 > 0:56:28A courteous reply came back. The offer was never taken up.
0:56:30 > 0:56:35# Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles... #
0:56:35 > 0:56:38In old age, Sickert cultivated the persona of the eccentric,
0:56:38 > 0:56:42senile artist - it was the last of his roles.
0:56:45 > 0:56:48He didn't live to see the full atrocity of World War II,
0:56:48 > 0:56:49perhaps for the best.
0:56:49 > 0:56:52On the 22nd January 1942,
0:56:52 > 0:56:57Richard Sickert died peacefully in his favourite chair.
0:56:57 > 0:56:59Walter had been dead for years.
0:57:01 > 0:57:03By the time of his death,
0:57:03 > 0:57:05Walter Sickert's position was assured.
0:57:06 > 0:57:10He'd painted sides of urban life few were willing face,
0:57:10 > 0:57:14and, in the process, given British art a new language of expression.
0:57:15 > 0:57:19Without him, the art of Bacon and Freud is unimaginable.
0:57:20 > 0:57:22And as for his alter ego, Richard,
0:57:22 > 0:57:25when he died, his place wasn't so certain.
0:57:25 > 0:57:29His "transcriptions" baffled many contemporaries,
0:57:29 > 0:57:33but now seem deeply prophetic of a world saturated
0:57:33 > 0:57:35by mechanical reproductions.
0:57:35 > 0:57:37In fact, in his various guises,
0:57:37 > 0:57:41Sickert was probably the most influential British painter
0:57:41 > 0:57:42of the 20th century.
0:57:44 > 0:57:48His life may have been theatrical, but it was more than a passing show.
0:57:56 > 0:57:58"Lift your head. After ten years,
0:57:58 > 0:58:00"you will see you are one amongst thousands.
0:58:00 > 0:58:03"Another ten years - among hundreds.
0:58:03 > 0:58:08"On, on... And one day, a Monday or a Tuesday -
0:58:08 > 0:58:13"with a peacock's feather of luck, you may do better than you know."