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Lot Essay
In October 1906, Sickert visited Paris to exhibit at the Salon d’Automne, remaining there through the Autumn to work on a series of nudes. First exhibited in the artist’s career-defining exhibition at Bernheim Jeune several months later alongside some of his finest Camden Town nudes of that year, Jeanne is one of this Paris series. Jeanne regularly modelled for Sickert during these months, and an inscription on a related drawing of the same subject suggests that she also sat for Cézanne. Jeanne represents how, for Sickert, this was a time of great inspiration as he sought to strip away the stagnant and outmoded idealisations of the Salon nude at the time.
Although Sickert’s nude subjects are synonymous with his most characteristic subjects, alongside music halls, townscapes, and portraits, they were in fact confined to little more than a decade of his sixty year career, giving each of this relatively small number of works a special interest. Following time in Venice painting local prostitutes, and London depicting fellow lodgers nearby in Camden Town, Sickert produced unapologetically realist paintings of women characterised by casual poses, intimate settings, and a departure from the idealised aesthetics of the Academy.
This realism was likely influenced by his relationship with the Impressionists working in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. Sickert had seen Degas’ Bathers in his studio in 1883 and 1886, and had exhibited regularly with the dealers Paul Durand-Ruel and later Bernheim Jeune at the Salon d’Automne. In Sickert’s view, modern artists painted the modern nude ‘not as Venus or Primavera but as a body emerging from bathtubs and crumpled sheets’ (E. Chambers, exhibition catalogue, Walter Sickert, Tate, London, 2022, p. 145).
Through his relationships in Paris, Sickert established himself as a painter of modern nudes. Indeed, Virginia Woolf reminds us that Sickert’s figures are ‘bodies that work, hands that work, faces that have been lined and suppled and seamed by work’ and that his paint ‘has a tangible quality; it is made not of air and stardust but of oil and earth,’ (V. Woolf, quoted in ibid., p. 148). He aimed to capture the raw essence of life and human bodies, presenting a more genuine and tangible artistry. He presented the human body without the usual allegorical or romantic embellishments, firmly situating it in a gritty urban context.
In a dimly lit bedroom, Sickert presents Jeanne reclining languidly upon what appears to be a bed, her arm raised in repose as she acknowledges the viewer in an expression of curiosity. There is a delicate intimacy between the confinements of the space and its inhabitant, emphasised by the close cropping of the picture’s composition. Rendered in a ream of small daubs of pigment, a subtle tension resides within this informal setting as the figure, bed, and walls merge in a restrained tonality of pastels, the most vibrant accent the rosy colour of Jeanne’s lips and nipple.
Jeanne is a superb example of Sickert’s ability to create narrative interest through minute details, the suggestion of light flickering on Jeanne’s flesh foregrounding her femininity. In Sickert’s own words, he aimed to incite ‘the sensation of a page torn from the book of life,’ (W.R. Sickert, quoted in ibid., p. 148).
Although Sickert’s nude subjects are synonymous with his most characteristic subjects, alongside music halls, townscapes, and portraits, they were in fact confined to little more than a decade of his sixty year career, giving each of this relatively small number of works a special interest. Following time in Venice painting local prostitutes, and London depicting fellow lodgers nearby in Camden Town, Sickert produced unapologetically realist paintings of women characterised by casual poses, intimate settings, and a departure from the idealised aesthetics of the Academy.
This realism was likely influenced by his relationship with the Impressionists working in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. Sickert had seen Degas’ Bathers in his studio in 1883 and 1886, and had exhibited regularly with the dealers Paul Durand-Ruel and later Bernheim Jeune at the Salon d’Automne. In Sickert’s view, modern artists painted the modern nude ‘not as Venus or Primavera but as a body emerging from bathtubs and crumpled sheets’ (E. Chambers, exhibition catalogue, Walter Sickert, Tate, London, 2022, p. 145).
Through his relationships in Paris, Sickert established himself as a painter of modern nudes. Indeed, Virginia Woolf reminds us that Sickert’s figures are ‘bodies that work, hands that work, faces that have been lined and suppled and seamed by work’ and that his paint ‘has a tangible quality; it is made not of air and stardust but of oil and earth,’ (V. Woolf, quoted in ibid., p. 148). He aimed to capture the raw essence of life and human bodies, presenting a more genuine and tangible artistry. He presented the human body without the usual allegorical or romantic embellishments, firmly situating it in a gritty urban context.
In a dimly lit bedroom, Sickert presents Jeanne reclining languidly upon what appears to be a bed, her arm raised in repose as she acknowledges the viewer in an expression of curiosity. There is a delicate intimacy between the confinements of the space and its inhabitant, emphasised by the close cropping of the picture’s composition. Rendered in a ream of small daubs of pigment, a subtle tension resides within this informal setting as the figure, bed, and walls merge in a restrained tonality of pastels, the most vibrant accent the rosy colour of Jeanne’s lips and nipple.
Jeanne is a superb example of Sickert’s ability to create narrative interest through minute details, the suggestion of light flickering on Jeanne’s flesh foregrounding her femininity. In Sickert’s own words, he aimed to incite ‘the sensation of a page torn from the book of life,’ (W.R. Sickert, quoted in ibid., p. 148).