It is characteristic of William Levy’s thoughtful approach that his collection includes two early paintings by Walter Sickert, one of the most imaginative and complex painters active in Britain at the turn of the century. The major retrospective of his work held recently at Tate Britain underscored his ties with James Whistler and Edgar Degas, the role he played in strengthening cross-Channel artistic connections and the influence he continues to exert on contemporary painters.
Sickert had spent time in the Normandy resort of Dieppe as a child and was a regular visitor throughout his life, even settling in the town for a period between 1898-1905. It was via Dieppe that Sickert kept up his awareness of trends in contemporary French painting, and maintained an acquaintance with Degas, and through him, the ideas of the Impressionists. His Dieppe townscapes range from its harbor, fishing trade, shops and cafés, with buildings often bathed in the dappled light and swift brushwork found in the present work, painted wet-in-wet with fluid application. The Street of the Wind, Dieppe likely depicts one of the town’s narrow streets that wound its way down to the beach. (L. Browse, Sickert, London, 1960, p.65). Writing to his colleague, Florence Pash Humphrey Holland, in c. 1900, Sickert advised fellow painters to “try to finish [a painting] in one sitting if you can” (W. Baron, Sickert, Phaidon Press Limited, London and New York, 1973, p.57); it would seem likely that he accomplished that goal with this composition.
Sickert in Dieppe
Right: Walter Sickert , Les Arcades, Dieppe: Study for the Elephant Poster, circa 1910, oil on canvas, Sold at Sotheby’s London in May 2012 for 85,250 GBP.
"This baffling man who was born in Munich in 1860, emigrated to Britain as a child and became one of our greatest and weirdest artists, emerges in this excellent show as even odder than I thought. In that unsettling way of seeing lies his modernity."
The focus of the present work is a mother and her children who are walking hand-in-hand down the street to the sea. The child on the left appears to skip in excitement toward an afternoon filled with sun and merriment, while his mother clutches his left hand, holding him back perhaps against the urge to run ahead. The cerulean color of the sky extends into the foreground, where it flows into the pavement and out of view. The sense of transience in the figures and the seamless meeting of land and water make this an excellent example of Sickert’s Dieppe cityscapes.