Walter Richard Sickert, A.R.A.

Possibly Sir Hugh Walpole
Leicester Galleries, London
Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd, London, where acquired by the husband of the present owner

London, Leicester Galleries, Exhibition of the Art Collection of the Late Sir Hugh Walpole, April-June 1945, (possibly).

Wendy Baron, Sickert, Paintings and Drawings, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2006, cat. no.105.2, p.221.

Original canvas. The canvas undulates slightly in the top left quadrant. There are some pinholes at the extreme edges of the composition which appear to be consistent with the artist's working method, only visible when viewed unframed. On close inspection there is evidence of frame abrasion with several very small flecks of associated loss at the edges of the composition, and the canvas has worn thin at the lower left corner. There is a small area of paint cracking and loss at the upper right horizontal edge and a small area of craquelure at the upper centre of the sky. There is light surface dirt and spots of surface matter scattered across the work. With the exception of the above the work appears to be in good condition. Ultraviolet light reveals several areas of florescence and probable retouching in the blue pigments of the sky and the lower left edge of the composition, which have been sensitively executed. The work is housed in a painted wooden frame. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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'Venice – "The loveliest City in the World"' 
(Walter Sickert, ‘The New Life of Whister’, Fortnightly Review, December 1908)

Sickert is most often identified with London, whether it be his music-hall paintings of the 1880s or his Camden Town interiors of the early 1900s, but for almost a decade from 1895 to 1904, Venice was the city which was to form the dominant theme in his painting. It was here that Sickert, through his continued experimentation into innovative modes of expression, came to be known as one of the most important British artists at the turn of the century.

Ruskin’s influential book, The Stones of Venice, caused a flood of interest in Venice towards the end of the nineteenth century and Sickert, like many before him, became passionate about this mystical floating city. Sickert would have first come across Venice as a studio assistant to Whistler when he assisted him with his series of Venetian etchings. Unlike Whistler who had concentrated on narrow walkways and backwaters, in his early visits to the city, Sickert’s focus was on the impressive architecture of Venice’s grand buildings particularly centered around St Mark’s Square which he found ‘engrossing’ (Sickert in a letter to Wilson Steer, 1895). Sickert’s Venetian landscapes were amongst his most sought-after works in the early part of the twentieth century, becoming particularly popular in Paris: when Bernheim Jeune held an exhibition of Sickert’s works in 1904, a third of the canvases were of Venetian subjects.

In the present work Sickert concentrates on the Ducal Palace - the seat of the Venetian government, symbolizing the wealth, power and prestige of the state. He has not, however, chosen the usual vista, rather this work portrays this magnificent building from an angle looking along the front of the palace from the left-hand corner with the monolithic granite column of the Lion of St Mark standing to the side representing imperial glory. Sickert believed that ‘the artist existed to disentangle from nature the illumination that brings out most clearly the character of each scene’ (Sickert, 'French Pictures at Knoedler's Gallery', Burlington Magazine, July 1923). In this work he has left out the famous lagoon thus focusing our attention on the building. By painting from such an acute angle the Gothic palace fills the entire canvas and exceeds it, with the effect of emphasizing the grandeur of the building. The small shifting figures on the piazza below, noted by dabs of paint, add to the sense of physical scale and majesty of the architecture. Sickert at this time was interested in the effects of light at different times of the day on the façade of St Mark’s Square. Here, using his unique vision of impressionism, he captures the pink glow of reflected sunlight on the decorative brickwork above the colonnades and contrasts this with the rich crimsons of the shadows below to illuminate the grand façade of this stately building.