Walter Sickert: A Life

Matthew Sturgis

For Rebecca

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

1 A Well-Bred Artist

I The Münchener Kind’l’

II A New Home

III L’enfant Terrible

2 Apprentice or Student?

I The Utility Player

II Whistler’s Studio

III Relative Values

3 Impressions and Opinions

I The Butterfly Propaganda

II A New English Artist

III The London Impressionists

IV Unfashionable Portraiture

V In Black and White

4 The End of the Act

I Gathering Clouds

II Bridge of Sighs

III The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

IV Amantium Irae

5 Jack Abroad

I A Watering Place Out of Season

II Changing Effects

III Gaîté Montparnasse

IV Dal Vero

6 Londra Benedetta

I The Lady in Red

II Ambrosial Nights

III Mr Sickert at Home

IV The Artist as Teacher

7 Contre Jour

I Les Affaires de Camden Town

II An Imperfect Modern

III Red, White, and Blue

IV Suspense

8 The New Age

I The Conduct of a Talent

II Private View

III How Old Do I Look?

9 Lazarus Raised

I Over the Footlights

II Home Life

III Bathampton

IV Cheerio

Postscript Walter Sickert: Case Closed

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements and Preface

Notes

Praise

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

I THE MÜNCHENER KIND’L’

He is a dear little fellow.

(Eleanor Sickert to Oswald Adalbert Sickert)

Walter Richard Sickert was born on 31 May 1860 in a first-floor flat at 59 Augustenstrasse, Munich, in what was then the independent kingdom of Bavaria.1 He was the first-born child of Oswald Adalbert Sickert and his wife Eleanor. Oswald Sickert was a Dane, from the town of Altona in the Duchy of Holstein. He was a trained artist, with ambitions as a painter, but he was constrained to work as a hack draughtsman-on-wood for a Bavarian illustrated comic-paper called the Fliegende Blätter. Eleanor – or Nelly as she was known by her affectionate husband and her friends and relatives – was English by birth. The couple spoke mainly English at home.2 Their new son was christened by the English chaplain at Munich: he was given the names Walter Richard.3 Walter was chosen as being a name that looked – even if it did not sound – the same in both English and German.4 Richard was the name of the boy’s maternal grandfather, the late Revd Richard Sheepshanks, a figure whose presence loomed over the young family, half beneficent, half reproachful.

Richard Sheepshanks had not been a conventional clergyman. He had scarcely been a clergyman at all. He never held any cure. His interest in the celestial sphere, though keen, had been scientific. He made his reputation as an astronomer and mathematician. The Sheepshanks came of prosperous Yorkshire stock. The family in the generation before had made a fortune in cloth, supplying – so it was said – material for military greatcoats to the British army during the Napoleonic Wars. The money from the Leeds factories amassed in this profitable trade allowed Richard and his five siblings to indulge their interests and enthusiasms. One brother, Thomas, chose Brighton and dissipation.5 Another, John, dedicated himself to art: he moved to London and built up a large and important collection of English paintings, which he exhibited to the public at his house in Rutland Gate and bequeathed to the nation in 1857, six years before his death.*6

Richard turned to the sciences. A brilliant university career at Trinity College, Cambridge, was crowned with a mathematics fellowship in 1817. He briefly contemplated the prospect of both the law and the Church and secured the necessary qualifications for both. (Having taken holy orders, he always styled himself ‘the Reverend’.) On receiving his inheritance, however, he was able to direct all his considerable energies to scientific research. He became a member of the Geological and Astronomical Societies, and was for several years the editor of the latter’s Monthly Notes. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and of the University of London. His interests were many, ranging from demographics to the study of weights and measures. He had a particular passion for fine scientific instruments and devoted most of his income to buying them. He also busied himself in the intellectual and political disputes of the scientific world.7

In scientific circles Richard Sheepshanks was greatly respected – much loved by his friends and not a little feared by his enemies. He was, in the restrained words of his close colleague, the astronomer Augustus de Morgan, a man of ‘very decided opinions’. And he was not shy of expressing them. His first professional training had been as a lawyer, and throughout his academic career he had a relish for controversies. He was, as he himself put it, well suited to such business, having ‘leisure, courage and contempt for opinion when he knew he was right’. He was well armed with a ready, if somewhat sarcastic, wit and a piquant turn of phrase. But in matters of what he considered to be of real importance he would – according to one obituarist – drop these weapons in favour of a more ‘earnest deportment’ and a more ‘temperate’ utterance. Despite being of ‘hardly middle stature’, having red-tinged hair and the inevitable side-whiskers of mid-Victorian fashion, he was, from the evidence of his portraits, a handsome man. He was also excellent company – clever, witty, well read in both the classics and in modern literature, and widely travelled in Europe.8 He was knowledgeable too about art; and, tipped off by his brother John, commissioned Thomas Lawrence to paint a portrait of his beloved elder sister, Anne.9

Anne Sheepshanks was as remarkable as her brother. A woman of enormous practical capability, intelligence, and sound sense, she encouraged and supported Richard in all his endeavours. She allied her resources to his, sharing his interests, his cares, and his house. The home they established together at 30 Woburn Place, Bloomsbury – not far from the British Museum – became a lively gathering place for many of the intellectual luminaries of scientific London. They even built their own small observatory in the garden, from which, in an age before saturated street-lighting, they were able to mark the passage of the stars.10

The Reverend Richard Sheepshanks – like his sister – never married. His fellowship at Cambridge was dependent upon his remaining a bachelor, and he seems to have been in no hurry to give up his position, his salary, or his independence. Nevertheless, he did not allow professional considerations to stand altogether between him and the opposite sex.

It is not known exactly how or when he encountered Eleanor Henry. Indeed, very little is known about Eleanor Henry at all, except that she was Irish, fair-haired and handsome, and was a dancer on the London stage.11 Perhaps Mr Sheepshanks picked her out of a chorus line. Or perhaps he met her in the street. At the beginning of the 1830s she was living in Henrietta Street, a little cul-de-sac behind Brunswick Square, near to the Sheepshanks’ London home.* The popular reputation of dancers in the nineteenth century set them very low in the moral order; they were ranked beneath even actresses, and set almost on a par with prostitutes. This picture, however, was certainly a distortion. Although ‘respectability’ was a rather fluid concept during the early Victorian age, most ballet girls actually came from modestly ‘respectable’ homes, and lived – as far as can be ascertained – modestly ‘respectable’ lives.12 Eleanor Henry’s position seems to confirm this point. For a start she was married. Her husband was a Mr James Henry. He listed his profession as ‘Solicitor’, although he does not appear in the law lists of the period and may well have been little more than a lawyer’s clerk.13 At the beginning of the 1830s they were living together in the house of a Mrs Henry (perhaps James’s mother).14 Despite this unpropitious domestic arrangement, the Revd Richard Sheepshanks succeeded not only in forming an attachment with Eleanor but also in fathering a child on her. A daughter was born on 19 August 1830.15

Mr Henry’s attitude to, or indeed knowledge of, his wife’s liaison is unknown. He did, however, give his surname and his blessing to the infant. It was he, rather than Richard Sheepshanks, who attended the christening at St Pancras Parish Church and who had himself listed as the child’s legal father. The little girl was baptized Eleanor Louisa Moravia Henry. The last Christian name is something of a mystery, as the Henrys did not, as far as records show, belong to the Moravian sect.16

The young Eleanor Louisa – or Nelly – was brought up in the Henry household. If Richard Sheepshanks provided some assistance he did so covertly. Nevertheless, his interest in his natural daughter does seem to have been real and, given the proximity of Woburn Place to Henrietta Street, he must have had opportunities for observing her. Almost nothing is known of Nelly Henry’s childhood, except that it was not happy. The demands of her mother’s stage work meant that she was often neglected. She did, however, show an early love for music. Her mother sang to her, and the songs of the passing street performers also caught her ear, making a lasting impression on her memory and her imagination.17

The Henrys moved from Henrietta Street in 1833. They disappear from view but almost certainly remained in London, for, at some moment later in the decade, Eleanor broke with her husband and began a relationship with Samuel Buchanan Green, a dancing master from Highgate. She took her daughter with her and, though there is no evidence to suggest that she married Mr Green, she took his name and the young Nelly came to regard Mr Green as her ‘step-father’.18 In November 1838, when Eleanor gave birth to a son, christened Alfred, she listed her name on the birth certificate as ‘Green, late Henry’.19 In 1840, the Greens established a dancing school in connection with the Princess Theatre in Oxford Street. The teaching studio was immediately behind the theatre at 36 Castle Street and the family lived above it – an arrangement that can only have increased the 10-year-old Nelly’s love of music.20

Perhaps the Revd Richard Sheepshanks disapproved of these new domestic conditions, or maybe the arrival of young Alfred placed a strain on the resources of the Green household; perhaps the Sheepshanks’ own plans to move out of London precipitated the change. Whatever the reason, at about this time Richard offered to take his natural daughter under his own care, to remove her from the stage-door world of Castle Street, to arrange for her schooling, and to provide in some as yet unspecified measure for her future. The offer was accepted and, at the beginning of the 1840s, the old loosely fixed order was broken up.21

Nelly was sent over the Channel to a small boarding school at Neuville-lès-Dieppe. Richard Sheepshanks and his sister closed up Woburn Place and moved to a house on the outskirts of Reading, where once again they built a little observatory in the garden. The Greens continued with their school at Castle Street. And according to family tradition Mrs ‘Green, late Henry’ also performed on the stage of the Princess Theatre.22 It is doubtful that she ever saw her daughter again. She might have encountered Richard Sheepshanks occasionally. He returned often to London during the first years of the new decade. He was engaged in the great work of his later life: the establishment of a new set of standard weights and measures, the former one having been destroyed in the fire that swept through the Palace of Westminster in 1832. In a well-insulated subterranean laboratory in the cellars of Somerset House, he carried out tens of thousands of micro-measurements in order to determine the standard yard.23 It was a staggering exercise of both patience and artistry. He had, it was recognized, ‘an extraordinarily skilful eye with the micrometer’ and his comparisons ‘were so far superior to those of all preceding experimenters … as to defy all competition on grounds of accuracy’.24

In 1850, Eleanor and Samuel Green vanish from the London Directories. According to the family tradition preserved by Nelly, they emigrated to Australia, where Mrs Green took to drink.25 It has been supposed that Richard Sheepshanks arranged, if he did not insist upon, this removal, but there is no evidence to support such a theory. Nevertheless, the notion of a close relative disappearing to the Antipodes never to be heard of again was powerful in its suggestion. It became one of the defining elements in young Nelly Henry’s personal story. And it was a story that in time she would communicate to her own children, thrilling them with its mingled sense of mystery and loss. The actual moment of Eleanor Green’s departure from England, however, probably passed unknown across the Channel by her daughter.26

Dieppe in the 1840s already had an established expatriate colony. Living was cheap there compared to England. The completion of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and the introduction of steam packet-boats meant that it took a mere eleven hours to travel from London to the French port. Mrs Maria Slee’s school, set – across the harbour from the old town – on the still verdant slopes of Neuville, was one of several educational establishments in the area catering for English children:27 the bracing sea air was considered to be beneficial to youth.28 Mrs Slee’s was a happy place, and it offered Nelly the structure and companionship that had been lacking from the lonely and bohemian years of her childhood, and also the security of real affection.

She boarded there not only during the terms but also in the holidays, growing in time to be less a pupil than a part of the family. Mrs Slee was almost a second mother to Nelly; her daughters ‘became much attached’ to their young English charge, and she to them.29 It was during these years that Dieppe developed, for Nelly, into a charmed place – the place where ‘she was happy and well for the first time’.30

She stayed at the school until she was almost eighteen, becoming strong, handsome and accomplished. She learnt to speak French ‘with a good accent at least’.31 Her status and her future prospects, however, remained a mystery to her. She was aware that she was under the protection of a distinguished guardian – a Fellow of the Royal Society – but, although they corresponded, it seems that they did not meet. She did not learn the identity of her protector until 1848, when she was eighteen.32 Richard Sheepshanks was impressed with the progress made by his daughter, and he was anxious that it should continue. But perhaps not at Dieppe. The year 1848 was one of turmoil and revolution throughout Europe. The French once again overthrew their monarch, the unfortunate Louis Philippe. He fled to England and many English residents in France made the same trip. Anti-British sentiment was rife. Richard took the precaution of arranging for Nelly to leave Dieppe to finish her education in the pretty little Baltic town of Altona near the mouth of the river Elbe. Altona was nominally a Danish town, part of the Danish-controlled duchy of Holstein. But it was just across the river from Hamburg and had strong links with the German states.

Richard Sheepshanks knew the town well because it had a famous observatory, renowned for producing the clearest and most accurate astronomical tables. For many years it had been under the directorship of his close friend, Heinrich Schumacher. Schumacher was an astronomer of international standing, a member of the Royal Society in London, and the editor of Astronomische Nachrichten, the principal journal in the field.33 And it was with Professor Schumacher and his family that Nelly was sent to stay. The events of 1848 had not been without their effect on the Schumachers. Hostilities had also erupted between Denmark and Prussia over the disputed territory of Holstein, and while the conflict continued the professor’s salary was not paid. Richard Sheepshanks was happy to think that Nelly’s board-and-lodging expenses would contribute to the family coffers. The professor undertook to see to her education, while his wife, his daughter, and the widow of his son, promised to make her welcome.34

Initially, Nelly’s position in the household was slightly ambiguous. Richard had intimated to Professor Schumacher that, although Nelly was his ‘ward’, she would ‘not improbably’ have to make her own way in the world – perhaps as a governess, that established refuge for portionless but educated Victorian girls.35 Certainly Richard Sheepshanks’ hopes for his ward’s education suggested such a path. He wanted her to study music and drawing, as well as learning German and mathematics and perhaps even some Latin. But he repeatedly stressed that ‘Nelly’ was to be shown no special consideration,36 and that if she could be made use of ‘as nurse, amanuensis, housemaid, or [in] any other capacity’ it would be ‘the best education she could have’.37

Such promptings were unnecessary. Nelly had a generous and helpful disposition. She speedily endeared herself to the Schumachers through her acts of kindness and her expressions of gratitude. She also proved a ready pupil. She learnt, as she put it, ‘to sing very well and to paint very badly. She devoted herself to embroidery and fine sewing. She revealed a gift for languages, learning to speak German ‘like a native’.38 She also picked up Italian and Danish, though it is not known whether Professor Schumacher found time to teach her any Latin. (He had replied facetiously to Richard Sheepshanks’ suggestion that he might give Nelly some classical education with the French verse: ‘Soleil qui luit le matin,/Enfant qui boit du vin,/Femme qui sait le Latin/Ne viennent jamais a bonne fin.’*39)

The Revd Richard Sheepshanks corresponded regularly with both Nelly and Professor Schumacher and was encouraged by news of her progress. He was able to confirm this good impression when he visited Altona in October 1849. Over the previous year his plans for his ward’s future seem to have grown and developed. And it was perhaps during, or immediately after, this visit that he revealed to Nelly his true position and declared his intention of formally recognizing her as his child. She preserved always, as the one scrap of writing in his hand, a passage from the letter in which he revealed to her his fatherhood: ‘Love me, Nelly, love me dearly, as I love you.’40 The scrap is undated, but there is a detectable shift in Richard’s attitude to Nelly after that October; references to her are more open and more openly affectionate; and his letters end with expressions of ‘best love’.41

If Nelly’s knowledge of modern languages grew chez Schumacher so did her sense of fun and her sense of life’s possibilities. It was a convivial household in a convivial town, and she was surrounded by people of her own age. Altona had a sizeable English population and Nelly formed several long-lasting friendships. There were frequent picnics, concerts, operas, even balls. She made excursions into Italy and Austria.42 This round of diversion was interrupted at the end of 1850 by Professor Schumacher’s sudden illness and scarcely less sudden death.43 Nelly, however, had become part of the family by this stage. There was no suggestion that she should leave. She stayed on in the Schumacher household, a companion to the grieving family.

Perhaps it was this family tragedy that introduced her to Professor Schumacher’s son, Johannes.44 He was the artistic member of the family and had been away, studying painting in Rome. He immediately established a rapport with the family’s English houseguest, a rapport that deepened the following summer when Nelly nursed him through a bout of illness. She shared his love of Nature, and his enjoyment of climbing mountains. He admired her singing.45 In tandem with his friendship for Nelly, Johannes also developed a close tie with her guardian. Missing his own father, he took to writing to Richard Sheepshanks, seeking his advice, his encouragement and assistance. He even visited him in London in the autumn of 1852. Early in the following year, Johannes wrote from Italy declaring that he planned to leave Rome to continue his studies in Paris. For a painter, he declared, Paris was the place to learn.46

It was the common cry across the art schools of Europe at the time. Italy might boast the treasures of antiquity and the Renaissance, and the great German academies at Munich, Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Dresden could offer a thorough practical training; but the French capital had the glamour of innovation and even revolt. It was there that the new spirit of ‘Realism’ was asserting itself with most force: at the Salon of 1850, Gustave Courbet had struck a new note with his monumental canvas The Stonebreakers. The depiction of the contemporary working man on the heroic scale of antiquity caused a sensation that others were keen to experience and to echo. Students gravitated to Paris from all over Europe and America, to throng the ateliers of Troyan, Gleyre, Couture, and Lecoq de Boisbaudran, hangar-like studios bristling with easels, plaster-casts and ambitions. Johannes Schumacher was not the only son of Altona to be drawn to Paris. He found several others already there. Amongst his confrères was an earnest young art student called Oswald Adalbert Sickert.

Oswald Sickert belonged to Altona’s artistic elite. His father, the dashing fair-haired, blond-bearded Johann Jürgen Sickert, was a pillar of the cultural community: an artist, wit, and dandy who – despite his Nordic colouring – was known to at least some of his friends by the Italianate nickname, ‘Sickarto’.47 The son of a long line of Flensborg fishermen, he had trained as a ‘decorative painter’ and was – at least according to his grandson – for a while the ‘head of a firm of decorators who were employed in the royal palaces of Christian VIII of Denmark’.48 He became, in time, an accomplished landscape painter, and after moving to Altona in the late 1820s was a leading member of the town’s exhibiting society. He showed there regularly, and also at the neighbouring Hamburg Kunstverein.49 He was interested in technical innovations and was a pioneer of both lithography and photography. In 1850 the local directories list his address – at 34 Blücherstrasse – as a ‘studio of Daguerreotype’.*50

Nevertheless, he did not abandon his first calling. He continued to undertake decorative commissions: the museum in the town still contains a painted ‘overdoor’ by him of a woman with flowers. In 1855 – at the request of the municipality – he drew up a scheme for providing art training for the town’s artisans through ‘Sunday Continuation classes’. In it he emphasized the practical benefits and applications of art, insisting on a thorough grounding in geometry and perspective. He considered that it would be ‘of more use to a carpenter, a turner or a smith, if his lessons enable him to draw a vase or an ornament correctly, than if his schooling results in nothing more than the adornment of his bedroom with a few trophies’.51 But if Johann Jürgen thought that art could be useful he also believed that the artist’s life should be fun. He was a great promoter of artistic conviviality – a composer of drinking songs and comic verses, and a leading light in the Altona dining society known as the ‘Namenlosen’ or the ‘Unnamed’, all the members of which were designated only by numbers.52