San Marco by Night

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Home Office, 2 Marsham Street

Born in Munich, Walter Richard Sickert was a British artist of mixed Dutch and Danish parentage. He abandoned an acting career in 1881 to briefly enter the Slade School of Art in London, before apprenticing under James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) in 1882. During a visit to Paris in 1883, he was introduced to Edgar Degas who inspired Sickert's practice of using figure and location drawings made ‘on the spot’ to produce finished paintings back in the studio. During the 1890s he chiefly painted portraits in London and townscapes in Dieppe. From 1905 he lived in the Camden Town area and in 1911 established the Camden Town group of artists. In 1934 Sickert moved to Broadstairs in Kent with Thérèse Lessore, his third wife, and then again near Bath in 1938. He received few official honours in his lifetime but a major retrospective of his work was held before his death, with posthumous exhibitions at Tate Britain in 1960, and the Courtauld Gallery, London, in 2007–2008.

Places

Italy, Venice: St Mark's Basilica, Venice

Subjects

topography, Camden Town Group, night, basilica, archway, balustrade, column, pillar (architectural feature), balcony, tower

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Walter Richard Sickert (1860 - 1942)

Title

San Marco by Night

Date

c.1910

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 78.00 cm, width: 66.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the Fine Art Society, May 1985

Inscription

bl: Sickert

Provenance

Presented by the artist to his pupil Wendela Wylde (née Boreel); sold through Sotheby's, London, on 5 March 1980 (Lot 44), bought in; sold through Sotheby's[?], London, on 10 June 1981 (Lot 100); sold through Sotheby's, London, on 23 May 1984 (Lot 79), bought in; collection of ‘Mrs N. Stepanious[?]’; from whom purchased by the Fine Art Society, London, in March 1985; from whom purchased by the Government Art Collection in May 1985

GAC number

16350