Walter Richard Sickert Sold at Auction Prices

Früchtemaler, Painter, Etcher, Illustrator, Lithographer, Genre Painter, Porträtmaler, Still life painter, Flower painter, b. 1860 - d. 1942

Walter Richard Sickert was a painter, actor, etcher, teacher and lecturer who was known as the "dandy and the raffish scourge of genteel bohemianism of the Bloomsbury Group, the deliberate vulgarian and the enemy of every sort of academicism." It was written that "his life was a trail of dumped pictures and abandoned marriages". Sickert was active throughout Great Britain, primarily in London, and for many years struggled to make a living. Wendy Baron, former director of the British Government Art Collection, is the "doyenne" of researching and authenticating his work, which is difficult because he frequently signed works that were not his simply because he liked them. He often copied images that he saw in newspapers or 19th century engravings.

Some of his subject matter came from his favorite haunts, which where "raucous music halls with the dodgiest clients and floozies on call." He also loved the theatre, and drew actors and actresses as they performed, and another favored subject were bedroom scenes with men getting dressed and women lolling on unmade beds.

During a long creative career of painting and printmaking, he completed about 2,800 works. Wendy Baron has included them in a 2007 book of 544 pages, Sickert: Paintings & Drawings, published by Yale University Press.