Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Walter Sickert in the Music Hall

Walter Sickert
The Old Bedford (study for etching)
ca. 1890
drawing
British Museum

Walter Sickert
Little Dot Hetherington at the Bedford Music Hall
(performing "The Boy I Love Is Up In The Gallery")
ca. 1894
lithograph
British Museum

"Unlike the majority of the Camden Town Group, Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) was recognised during his own lifetime as an important artist, and in the years since his death has increasingly gained a reputation as one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century British art.  He was universally acknowledged throughout his life as a colourful, charming and fascinating character, a catalyst for progress and modernity, yet someone who remained independent of groups, cliques and categories.  . . .  By 1887 he had fixed upon the theme which would occupy him intermittently for most of his career, the world of the British music hall . . ."

Walter Sickert
 The Old Mogul Tavern, Drury Lane
1908
etching, aquatint
British Museum

Walter Sickert
 Noctes Ambrosianae (Gallery of Middlesex Music Hall)
ca. 1908
etching, aquatint
British Museum

Walter Sickert
The Old Bedford
1908
etching, engraving, drypoint
British Museum

Walter Sickert
The Old Bedford
1910
etching
British Museum

Walter Sickert
The Old Middlesex (Orchestra-pit and Stalls of Middlesex Music Hall)
1910
etching
British Museum

Walter Sickert
The New Bedford
1915
etching, drypoint
British Museum

Walter Sickert
Gaité Montparnasse
ca. 1919
etching, engraving
British Museum

Walter Sickert
The London Shoreditch
ca. 1920
etching
British Museum

Walter Sickert
 The Orchestra of the London Shoreditch
ca. 1920
etching
British Museum

The London Music Hall in Shoreditch High Street, site of the two images directly above and one of Sickert's favorite haunts, had in fact been destroyed in 1915 during a zeppelin raid. 

Walter Sickert
T.W. Barrett (Collins's Music Hall, Islington Geen)
ca. 1922
etching
British Museum

Walter Sickert
In Memoriam, T.W. Barrett
ca. 1922
etching
British Museum

Sickert's inscription on the plate reads – "To T.W. Barrett, in grateful and affectionate homage for countless hours between 1885 and 1922, cheered and sweetened by his gentle and reticent wit, his exquisite and lovable personality – his sincere admirer, Walter Sickert"

Walter Sickert
"That Old-Fashioned Mother of Mine" 
(the singer is "traditionally identified" as Talbot O'Farrell)
ca. 1928-29
etching, engraving
British Museum