Churchill's Connections

Walter Sickert

Home » Friends » Walter Sickert

1860-1942
UK artist

  1. Introduction
  2. Stories
  3. Biographical summary
  4. See also
  5. Further reading
  6. References

1. Introduction

Sickert was a highly influential figure in twentieth-century British art. Although sometimes referred to as a post-impressionist or a British modernist, his artistic style is difficult to categorise. He became especially known for his social realism, depicting down-to-earth suburban settings, music halls and unstylised nudes. He produced many portraits and landscapes and was a printmaker as well as a painter. He was introduced to Winston in 1927 by Clementine, who knew him from her youth. He became Winston’s friend and painting mentor, teaching him various new techniques. He was an eccentric, changing his appearance and behaviour frequently. He died near Bath where he lived his final years with his third wife.

2. Stories

  • Sickert’s cosmopolitan background and complex character shaped his multi-faceted artwork.
  • Sickert’s family was also eclectic, including an astronomer, dancer, suffragist, writer, actor and some artists.
  • Sickert was introduced to Churchill by Clementine, who knew him from when she was a 14-year-old in France.
  • Sickert instructed Churchill in various techniques, expanding his artistic horizons.
  • Sickert’s portrait of Churchill now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, but Churchill did not like it.
  • Sickert and Churchill both became Royal Academicians, entitled to use the initials ‘RA’ after their names, although Sickert resigned after a year.
  • The bestselling American crime author Patricia Cornwell has made considerable efforts to try to prove that Sickert was Jack the Ripper.

Sickert’s cosmopolitan background and complex character shaped his multi-faceted artwork.

Born in Germany to a Danish-German father and an Anglo-Irish mother, Sickert moved with his family to England at the age of eight. After school, he made a brief attempt at acting, then started but abandoned formal art studies, instead training under the UK-based American artist James McNeill Whistler, learning a wide array of skills. Whistler introduced him to the French impressionist Edgar Degas who was also a strong artistic influence.

Sickert spent much of his time from the late 1880s to 1905 in France and Venice, then moved to Camden Town, northwest London, where he developed the theme of social reality for which he is known, often depicting pairs of people in a strained relationship, such as Ennui (c.1914) and Off to the Pub (1911). His depictions of music halls and unstylised paintings of nudes (often prostitutes) caused controversy, exacerbated by The Camden Town Murder (c.1908; four versions), showing a naked woman and a clothed man. The title was taken from a notorious 1907 killing of a prostitute for which a suspect was tried but acquitted.

Sickert and other post-impressionists formed the 16-person Camden Town Group in 1911, depicting drab suburban life. ‘The more our art is serious,’ he wrote, ‘the more will it tend to avoid the drawing-room and stick to the kitchen.’1

During a period of teaching in the 1910s, he also did some printmaking and produced written pieces about art. He developed a technique of laying down a two-tone underpainting and then adding top colours. From the mid-1920s he worked primarily from photographs.

He had numerous female relationships as a bachelor as well as during his first marriage. He was distraught by the death of his second wife from tuberculosis, aged 42; his third marriage seemed to have been happy. His behaviour became more eccentric over time, wearing unusual clothes and often changing hairstyles, facial hair, studios, circles of friends and even his name, becoming ‘Walter Richard’, then ‘Richard Sickert’, using his middle name.

He moved out of London to St Peters in Kent in 1934, partly to reduce his expenses, then spent his later years in Bathampton near Bath in southwest England, where he died in 1942 after a series of strokes.

Sickert’s family was also eclectic, including an astronomer, dancer, suffragist, writer, actor and some artists.

Walter’s father Oswald was an artist and engraver, producing illustrations for the German satirical magazine Fliegende Blätter (‘Flying Pages’). His paternal grandfather was an artist in the Danish royal court. His mother Eleanor was the illegitimate daughter of English astronomer Richard Sheepshanks and Eleanor Henry, an Irish dancer.

Walter was the eldest of five brothers and a sister. His brother Bernhard was a painter and architectural engraver who often travelled and exhibited with Walter. He too was influenced by James McNeill Whistler whose biography he wrote. His later career was inhibited by alcohol and drugs.

Walter’s sister Helena Swanwick was a suffragist, pacifist and writer. She studied at Girton College, Cambridge, then became a psychology lecturer. She married Frederick Swanwick, a maths lecturer. As a pacifist, she joined the suffragists rather than the militant suffragettes (see Suffragettes) and edited their newspaper, the Common Cause. Her name and image are on the plinth of suffragist Millicent Garrett Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square, London, together with those of 54 other women and four men.

She campaigned for a negotiated settlement to World War I, decried the punitive terms of the Versailles Treaty and represented the British empire to the League of Nations in the 1920s. She wrote an autobiography and two other books in the 1930s, taking a position of international non-interventionism and opposing potential action against Hitler. Suffering from depression, she committed suicide shortly after the outbreak of World War II.

Walter’s brother Oswald travelled the world selling the Encyclopædia Britannica and was also an author. His friends from his time as a Cambridge student included polymaths Bertrand Russell and Eddie Marsh, later Churchill’s private secretary. Marsh, a patron of the arts, also befriended Walter. Another of Walter’s brothers, Leonard, was an actor and singer.

Walter’s first wife was Ellen Cobden, suffragist and daughter of Liberal politician Richard Cobden. His second wife Christine Angus was his student, 18 years younger than him. His third wife Thérèse Lessore was a British artist who shared many of his interests and whose style became similar to that of Walter. Three months after he died, their Bathampton home became a temporary base for the Bath College of Art after its building was bombed.

Sickert was introduced to Churchill by Clementine, who knew him from when she was a 14-year-old in France.

In 1899, Clementine’s mother Blanche Hozier (nee Ogilvy) moved to Dieppe on the north coast of France with her four children to escape her estranged husband Henry Hozier, correctly fearing that he might try to abduct Clementine and/or her elder sister Kitty. In Dieppe there was a sizeable English-speaking community of artists, writers and military personnel with whom the Hoziers mingled. Walter Sickert was part of the group, becoming very friendly with Blanche and perhaps having an affair with her.

Reminiscing on her time there, Clementine wrote, ‘We saw Mr. Sickert almost every day. He used to come and see us in the evenings and, although I was only a child, I was rivetted and thrilled by his conversation.’2 Her daughter wrote that Clementine was ‘deeply struck by him, and thought he was the most handsome and compelling man she had ever seen’.3

Sickert was fond of Clementine, who would sometimes visit him at his house. On one occasion, she was let in by his housekeeper while he was out and was surprised by the untidiness. She set about cleaning up, washing plates and throwing away the skeleton of a herring. On Sickert’s return, he was angry to discover that the fish bones had disappeared, the subject of his next painting, but he soon calmed down.

After a few months, Clementine was sent to school in Scotland, but she met Sickert again in Paris three years later, where he showed her around for the day, taking her for tea with impressionist Camille Pissaro and for dinner with portrait artist Jacques-Émile Blanche.

They lost touch until 1927 when both were living in England and Winston was chancellor of the exchequer. Sickert read in a newspaper that Clementine had been knocked over by a vehicle (a precursor to Winston’s similar accident in New York two years later: see Bernard Baruch). He called upon her at 11 Downing Street while she was recuperating and was introduced to Winston. The two men hit it off, with Churchill enjoying Sickert’s lively personality and admiring his artistic skills.

Sickert instructed Churchill in various techniques, expanding his artistic horizons.

Clementine persuaded Sickert to assist Winston with his painting, which he did in person and by correspondence, visiting Chartwell on a number of occasions. He gave Winston guidance in canvas preparation and in mixing and applying paints. He introduced him to the techniques of camaïeu – using different tints of a single colour – and projecting a photo onto a canvas using a photo negative and a ‘magic lantern’.

Combining the two, Churchill produced a number of works which are quite different from his other paintings, the most striking being a 1954 portrait of Clementine at the launching of the battleship HMS Indomitable in 1940. Another notable one is Tea at Chartwell (c.1928) which includes Sickert at the dining room table with various others. A further example is Coco Chanel with a Dachshund (c.1928). All are on display at Chartwell.

Churchill was delighted with his learnings from Sickert, telling Clementine, ‘He is really giving me a new lease of life as a painter.’4 Churchill preferred doing landscapes and still life paintings to portraits, partly because ‘[a] tree doesn’t complain that I haven’t done it justice’.5 The photo and lantern combination gave him more confidence painting human figures and freed him from requiring his subjects’ availability and patience (he was a notoriously impatient sitter himself).

Churchill’s detective Edmund Murray, a keen amateur painter, was not so sure about the lantern technique. ‘Looks a bit like cheating’, he said. Churchill replied that ‘If the finished product looks like a work of art, then it is a work of art’.6 Murray’s submissions to the Royal Academy were rejected, unlike those of Churchill, who told him, ‘You know, your paintings are so much better than mine, but yours are judged on their merit.’7

Churchill loved painting outdoors and sought Sickert’s advice on how to capture his surroundings. Sickert, however, avoided being outside and spent most of his time at Chartwell reading French books behind closed curtains, resulting in Churchill dashing in and out of the house for consultations.

Sickert’s portrait of Churchill now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, but Churchill did not like it.

In 1927, Churchill took a photograph of Sickert using a camera given to him by Professor Frederick Lindemann, his scientific advisor. From this he produced a painted portrait and gave it to Sickert. Sickert then painted a portrait of Churchill using cobalt and pink in the underpainting and depicting Churchill sitting with a plume of smoke coming from his cigar. It was displayed in an exhibition where it was admired by writer Virginia Woolf and art critic Frank Rutter.

It was seemingly bought by Churchill’s cousin Ivor Spencer-Churchill for £300 (equivalent to £19,000 today) and given to Winston. However, neither Winston nor Clementine liked it. Nor did Eddie Marsh who thought it made Churchill resemble former Liberal MP Horatio Bottomley, editor of John Bull magazine and a convicted fraudster. Winston thought it made him look ‘crapulous’ and ‘bilious’8 and gave it away.

By 1931 it was owned by Conservative MP Charles Baillie-Hamilton, and afterwards by Lord Camrose, then the National Art Collections Fund, before being given to the National Portrait Gallery (‘NPG’). In 1981, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wanted to have it hung in 10 Downing Street but decided that its style would clash with other paintings. Other Sickert paintings in the NPG include a self-portrait (1935) and a portrait of Lord Beaverbrook (1935), a close friend and at one stage the owner of the world’s largest single collection of Sickert works.

Unaware of Churchill’s dislike of the portrait, Sickert gave Clementine a preparatory drawing for it. Graham Sutherland, whose painting of Winston was destroyed (see Paul Maze), later told Clementine’s daughter Mary that Clementine wrecked Sickert’s drawing by putting her foot through it.

However, Churchill seems to have been pleased (or not displeased) with a number of other portraits of himself, including those by John Lavery (1916), John Singer Sargent (1925), Frank O. Salisbury (1943), Douglas Chandor (1946) and Oswald Birley (1951). He was also the subject of numerous other paintings, cartoons, sculptures and photographic portraits (see ‘Further reading’).

He featured in only a small number of his own paintings, such as Mary’s First Speech (1928) and a scene at a horse race. It seems that he only did one self-portrait, Self Portrait (1919/1920), in the style of John Lavery.

Sickert and Churchill both became Royal Academicians, entitled to use the initials ‘RA’ after their names, although Sickert resigned after a year.

The Royal Academy of Arts was founded by King George III in 1768 as a private institution for students of the arts. It is governed by 80 elected members (Royal Academicians: ‘RAs’) and incorporates various institutions which together form the oldest art school in the UK. Its Summer Exhibition is the largest open-submission art exhibition in the world, with all RAs entitled to show up to six works and any other artist being able to submit pieces for selection.

The Academy’s first president was Sir Joshua Reynolds, a portrait artist who co-founded an exclusive dining organisation, The Club, in 1764. In the early 1900s, its members rejected a proposal for Churchill and his friend F.E. Smith to join, prompting them to establish The Other Club (see Lord Birkenhead).

Walter Sickert was elected an Associate in 1924 and a full Royal Academician in 1934, but he resigned in 1935 after falling out with the president Sir William Llewellyn over Llewellyn’s lack of support for the preservation of Jacob Epstein’s nude statues on a façade in the Strand, London.

In 1947, Churchill submitted two paintings to the Summer Exhibition using the pseudonym David Winter to avoid any potential bias by the judges. One was The Loup River, Alpes Maritimes (1936), a scene from a few miles west of Nice. The other was Winter Sunshine (c.1924), which he had submitted in an amateur art competition in 1925 at Sunderland House, London. The latter won first prize in 1925 after some debate among the judges. Artist Oswald Birley and art historian Kenneth Clark were satisfied that it was by an amateur but art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen thought it had been done by a professional.

David Winter’s true identity was revealed after the paintings had been accepted, and a year later Churchill was elected as Honorary Academician Extraordinary, a unique Royal Academy title, although there are a few ‘non-extraordinary’ Honorary Academicians. He exhibited forty-three more paintings at Summer Exhibitions in subsequent years.

The bestselling American crime author Patricia Cornwell has made considerable efforts to try to prove that Sickert was Jack the Ripper.

Jack the Ripper is the name given to the unidentified killer of at least five women in the Whitechapel area of London’s East End in 1888, and possibly others until 1891 or later. Although Patricia Cornwell’s theory has been dismissed by most ‘Ripperologists’ and art critics, her popularity as a fiction writer has led to it gaining much exposure. She has spent many years and over six million US dollars on it, including buying over 30 Sickert paintings and allegedly destroying one of them looking for hidden clues. She also bought his writing desk and some of his letters to search for DNA.

One of Sickert’s works was entitled Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom (1907), a portrayal of his own lodgings at 6 Mornington Crescent in Camden Town. His landlady had told him that she suspected that a previous tenant had been the Ripper. Other homicide-related paintings were his four versions of The Camden Town Murder (c.1908).

Cornwell’s case is based primarily on some writing paper used by both Sickert and one of the many people writing to the police at the time claiming to be the Ripper. The paper is said to be from the same pad of customised paper. She also claims that one of Sickert’s nudes was posed in the same way as one of the Ripper’s victims and that Sickert told stories about being involved in a cover-up of the murders.

Prior to Cornwell, an alternative theory was propounded by Stephen Knight in the 1970s with Sickert being an accomplice to the murders which were to hush up a secret marriage by Victoria’s grandson Prince Albert Victor (‘Eddy’), second in line to the throne. Eddy is said to have married Annie Crook, a Catholic shop assistant whom he met while taking painting lessons from Sickert; Annie was one of Sickert’s subjects. Sickert was supposedly a witness at Eddy’s marriage. The primary source was Joseph Gorman who said he was Sickert’s son but later retracted this and said the whole story was a hoax.

3. Biographical summary

OccupationPainter, printmaker, teacher
CountryGermany, UK
CareerActor (1879-81). Joined New English Art Club (1887), alternative to Royal Academy of Art. Art teacher (1890 to late 1920s), including at Westminster Technical Institute (1908-18). Co-founder of Camden Town Group, artists (1911). UK lecture tour (1923-24). Associate Royal Academician (1924). President, Royal Society of British Artists (1928-30). Royal Academician (1934, resigned 1935). Part-time lecturer, Bath Academy of Art, now part of Bath Spa University (1938-42).
Born1860 in Munich, Germany (14 years older than Churchill)
FatherOswald Sickert (1828-85), a Danish-German painter and woodcut illustrator; moved his family to England in 1868, when Walter was aged 8; died age 57
MotherEleanor ‘Nelly’ Henry (1830-1922), Anglo-Irish, illegitimate daughter of British astronomer Richard Sheepshanks and Eleanor Henry, Irish dancer
SiblingsEldest of six children:
1. Walter Richard (1860-1942)
2. Robert Oswald Sickert (1862-1923)
3. Bernhard (1863-1932), painter and architectural engraver
4. Helena (1864-1939), feminist, suffragist and pacifist; married name Swanwick; name is on plinth of Millicent Garrett Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square, London; suicide after depression
5. Oswald Valentine (1871-1923), author and salesman
6. Leonhard (1874-1945), actor and singer
EducationKing’s College School, London; Slade School (incomplete) (now the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London); pupil and assistant of James Whistler
Spouses1. Ellen Cobden (c.1848-1914); m. 1885, div. 1899; daughter of Liberal politician Richard Cobden
2. Christine Angus (1877-1920; m. 1911 until her death aged 42 from tuberculosis in 1920; daughter of Scottish leather merchant; Sickert’s student, 18 years younger than him
3. Thérèse Lessore, artist (1884-1945); m. 1926 until Sickert’s death in 1942; Lessore’s first husband was Bernard Adeney, painter
RelationshipsNumerous, including Madame Augustine Villain, Dieppe; perhaps Clementine Churchill’s mother, Blanche Hozier nee Ogilvy
ChildrenNone. Some allege that Villain’s son Maurice was Sickert’s but this is unlikely. Joseph Gorman claimed to be Sickert’s son but later stated that this was false.
Died1942 in St Georges Hill House, Bathampton Lane, Bathampton, Bath, aged 81 (23 years before Churchill), after a number of strokes. The Bath Academy of Art relocated to this address temporarily after being bombed three months after Sickert’s death.
BuriedSt Nicholas churchyard, Bathampton, Bath
Find a Grave: Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942)
Chartwell 
Other Club–
NicknameMr Nemo (as amateur actor)
Height5’11½” (1.82 m)

4. See also

Churchill and painting

Miscellaneous

5. Further reading

Walter Sickert

  • Baron, Wendy, and Walter Sickert, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings (Yale University Press, 2006)
  • Moorby, Nicola, ‘Walter Richard Sickert’, Tate website, 2006
  • Sturgis, Matthew, Walter Sickert: A Life (HarperCollins, 2005)

Churchill as an artist’s subject

Churchill as an artist

Miscellaneous

  • Begg, Paul, and John Bennett, The Complete and Essential Jack the Ripper (Penguin Books Limited, 2013)
  • Damrosch, Leo, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age (Yale University Press, 2019)
  • Mitchell, Donald, Against All Odds: The Life and Work of Helena Swanwick (Silverwood Books Limited, 2018)

See also ‘Further reading’ for Paul Maze.

6. References

1. Walter Sickert, ‘Idealism’, Tate, 1910.

2. Clementine Churchill, ‘Typed Letter Signed to Thérèse Sickert, Née Lessore’, 1942.

3. Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill (Doubleday, 2011), p. [000].

4. Winston S. Churchill and Clementine Churchill, Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, ed. by Mary Soames (Black Swan, 1999), p. 309.

5. Winston S. Churchill, Churchill’s Wit, ed. by Richard M. Langworth (Random House, 2009), p. 193.

6. Quoted in Churchill, p. 193.

7. Edmund Murray, I Was Churchill’s Bodyguard (W.H. Allen, 1987), p. 100.

8. Jonathan Black, Winston Churchill in British Art, 1900 to the Present Day: The Titan with Many Faces (Bloomsbury, 2017), p. [000].