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Lot Essay
Dated to 1901, The Horses of St Mark’s, Venice is one of Sickert’s most striking engagements with the Basilica de San Marco, and is an important work from the years which Sickert made Venice one of the defining subjects of his art. Sickert is remembered above all as the chronicler of London’s music halls and Camden Town interiors, yet Venice was a subject to which he returned to with a seriousness and persistence that makes it central to his oeuvre.
By 1900 Sickert’s artistic reputation was secured in both Paris and London, sought after by discerning collectors. After a brief career on the stage as an actor and an apprenticeship under J.W.M. Whistler, it was Edgar Degas’ mode of creation which proved to be particularly formative for Sickert. He began to paint with the spontaneity of the French expert, working from sketches created in the studio to preserve the immediacy of the first impression.
This comradery lasted until Degas’ death in 1917, and outlived Sickert’s marriage with Ellen Cobden. In the years that followed, from 1898 to 1905, Sickert lived largely abroad, dividing his time between Dieppe, Venice and Paris. Sickert stayed in Venice several times between 1895 and 1904 and was enamoured by the rich architecture and history the city had to offer. He dedicated his focus to Venice’s celebrated monuments and canals with equal attention, but two buildings commanded his focus above all others: the basilica of San Marco and Longhena’s church of Santa Maria della Salute. He returned to both repeatedly throughout the following decade, often reworking a successful composition years after he had first painted it.
In The Horses of St Mark’s, Venice, Sickert’s attention concentrated to the centrepiece of the upper register and sets the four gilded bronze horses, taken from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, low in the composition, enabling the great mosaic-framed lunette to dominate. Bronze, gold and stone interact together into a single glimmering surface and the saturated blue sky presses against the façade. Sickert’s daring cropping reveals the impact of Degas, whose ballet scenes cut into the stage at unexpected angles.
Degas’s lesson is best captured in Sickert’s own words. Writing from Dieppe to Mrs Hulton in 1903, he observed that he painted his Venetian subjects ‘better away than on the spot’ (W. Baron, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings, London, 2006, p. 45). This influence is shown most distinctly beside Renoir’s The Piazza San Marco, Venice, 1881, painted twenty years earlier. Renoir depicts the basilica from across the Piazza, with figures scattered over the foreground, and fades its domes and arches into a haze of feathery brushwork. Sickert takes the opposite course. He removes the square, the figures and the horizon, and brings the façade so close that it fills the canvas. Pinnacles are cut by the frame, and the arch reaches out of view. Where Renoir lets the building melt into atmosphere, Sickert holds its structure firm and gives the familiar monument an unexpected architectural weight.
By 1900 Sickert’s artistic reputation was secured in both Paris and London, sought after by discerning collectors. After a brief career on the stage as an actor and an apprenticeship under J.W.M. Whistler, it was Edgar Degas’ mode of creation which proved to be particularly formative for Sickert. He began to paint with the spontaneity of the French expert, working from sketches created in the studio to preserve the immediacy of the first impression.
This comradery lasted until Degas’ death in 1917, and outlived Sickert’s marriage with Ellen Cobden. In the years that followed, from 1898 to 1905, Sickert lived largely abroad, dividing his time between Dieppe, Venice and Paris. Sickert stayed in Venice several times between 1895 and 1904 and was enamoured by the rich architecture and history the city had to offer. He dedicated his focus to Venice’s celebrated monuments and canals with equal attention, but two buildings commanded his focus above all others: the basilica of San Marco and Longhena’s church of Santa Maria della Salute. He returned to both repeatedly throughout the following decade, often reworking a successful composition years after he had first painted it.
In The Horses of St Mark’s, Venice, Sickert’s attention concentrated to the centrepiece of the upper register and sets the four gilded bronze horses, taken from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, low in the composition, enabling the great mosaic-framed lunette to dominate. Bronze, gold and stone interact together into a single glimmering surface and the saturated blue sky presses against the façade. Sickert’s daring cropping reveals the impact of Degas, whose ballet scenes cut into the stage at unexpected angles.
Degas’s lesson is best captured in Sickert’s own words. Writing from Dieppe to Mrs Hulton in 1903, he observed that he painted his Venetian subjects ‘better away than on the spot’ (W. Baron, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings, London, 2006, p. 45). This influence is shown most distinctly beside Renoir’s The Piazza San Marco, Venice, 1881, painted twenty years earlier. Renoir depicts the basilica from across the Piazza, with figures scattered over the foreground, and fades its domes and arches into a haze of feathery brushwork. Sickert takes the opposite course. He removes the square, the figures and the horizon, and brings the façade so close that it fills the canvas. Pinnacles are cut by the frame, and the arch reaches out of view. Where Renoir lets the building melt into atmosphere, Sickert holds its structure firm and gives the familiar monument an unexpected architectural weight.