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October 4, 2007

Sickert the Ripper

Now this is a show I'd like to see:

WALTER SICKERT’S reputation may never recover from being fingered as Jack the Ripper by the American crime writer Patricia Cornwell five years ago.

Art critics and historians have dismissed the charges, based on an investigation that cost her $2million, as circumstantial, ignorant and downright fanciful without quite shaking the macabre link between one of Britain’s greatest painters and the Victorian serial killer who disembowelled five prostitutes in the East End of London in 1888.

Now audiences have a chance to judge for themselves whether Sickert was a killer or just an artist with a particularly ghoulish imagination when the paintings which Cornwell cited as evidence of her suspicions are displayed together for the first time.

Walter Sickert: The Camden Town Nudes at the Courtauld Institute of Art in Central London from October aims to “provide the first major account of his reinvention of the nude as a subject for modern painting.”

The star attractions among more than 25 canvases and related drawings will be four profoundly disturbing paintings from around 1908 known as The Camden Town Murder paintings.



Go read the whole thing. There's one picture.

Further:
Sickert is an under appreciated painter (as one can say about any British painter after the 18th century peak, I suppose). The Sickert painting that first hit me was not one of the Camden Town Nudes but Miss Earhart's Arrival (1932, late work), which I saw at the Tate - click and see. It's really something - it captures English weather and Britishy Modernism. It's a big painting - almost 2 meters wide - and grabbed me from across a room. I have no idea if Sickert was the Ripper (I read the Cornwell book and thought she'd better stick to novels), but he sure was a painter.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at October 4, 2007 8:31 AM

Comments

The Cornwell investigation was simply fascinating whether one agrees with her analysis or conclusions about Sickert. She certainly did extensive research and as expected, laid out a very interesting set of conclusions. The Ripper cases are so complex, and the paradigm for all that is evil in crime, tohether with the added fact that the killer (or killers?) was never conclusively identified further increases interest.

Posted by: Donald Wolberg at October 7, 2007 12:35 PM

One picture, yes but not by Sickert. What a way to make Degas look like Jack the Ripper!

Posted by: Freder1ck at October 12, 2007 1:06 PM

I apologize for the earlier comment. It was made before I read this blog. I have always had some kind of morbid fascination with the Ripper murders, and I have read Cornwall's book. Twice. I found it quite interesting, and quite convincing as well. I would be open to a discussion about it.

.....I didn't really find it very convincing - the timeline, particularly. I'm not sure Sickert had full opportunity for all of them. Means, sure - and she makes him sound crazy enough. But then why did he stop? That part I didn't understand. --MCT

Posted by: ECS at October 27, 2007 11:01 AM

I agree that serial killers don't just stop, but the way that she puts it, he didn't stop. She mentions something about several people in different parts of England being killed, doesn't she?

Posted by: ECS at October 30, 2007 9:53 PM