W.R. Sickert,
Brighton Pierrots, c.1915

Gallery 47, The Sands Gallery,
Early 20th Century Art, First Floor

The Sands Gallery is named after the Sands Family. Morton and Ethel Sands were friends of Sickert and collected his work. The Christopher Sands Trust recently donated ten works by Sickert to the Ashmolean Museum, among them Brighton Pierrots.

About the Artist:
Walter Sickert (1860 – 1942)

Walter Sickert was born in Germany in 1860 of Danish and Irish parents. He was a pupil of James McNeill Whistler in London and then trained in Paris, where he became friends with Edgar Degas and many of the Impressionists. Degas inspired him to capture the essence of daily, particularly urban, life, often including scenes from the theatre. Sickert wished his works to be like a ‘page torn from the book of life’.

In 1905 he settled in Camden Town, North London, and painted the workers and prostitutes who lived around him. He founded the Camden Town Group in 1911 and his studio became a meeting-place for the avant-garde artists and writers of his day.