Portrait of Giovanni Boldini (1841-1932), bust-length, turned to the right

In 1890, Walter Sickert began working as an art critic and illustrator for a short-lived satirical weekly, entitled The Whirlwind, founded by his friend Herbert Vivian. Sickert wrote reviews, articles and notes on the work of other artists for the newspaper. Each week, he was also tasked with providing a cartoon portrait taken from life of a person of distinction. Sickert eventually contributed fourteen portrait drawings to The Whirlwind on a weekly basis, beginning with a portrait of Liberal MP Charles Bradlaugh that was published in the inaugural issue of 28 June 1890. When the artist went to Dieppe in the summer of the same year, he continued to send portrait drawings to The Whirlwind, choosing for his subjects the people he spent time with there, such as the painter Jacques-Emile Blanche. By the middle of September, however, he had ceased to produce these drawings, and the project soon lapsed. The last drawing to be published was this portrait of the Italian painter Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931), probably made at Dieppe that summer, which appeared in the issue of The Whirlwind of 13 December 1890. The magazine ceased publication with the next issue.

Writing in 1910, Sickert recalled, ‘Boldini is the non-pareil parent of the wriggle and chiffon school of portraiture…the Franco-Italian master has three sturdy sons, Sargent, Blanche, and Helleu, and…none of them quite succeed in the bravura of the décolleté like their master. None of them has lifted the fashionable flic-flac to the nth with the same ring-master’s flourish of the lash as has the wizard of Ferrara and the Boulevard Berthier.’ (Walter Sickert, ‘Wiggle and Chiffon’, The New Age, 9 June 1910, pp. 129-130; reprinted in Anna Greutzner Robins, Walter Sickert: The Complete Writings on Art, Oxford, 2000, p. 243.)