The Integrity of Belgium

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Whitehall

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

Belgium

Subjects

WW1 art, genre, Camden Town Group, binoculars, Belgian, military uniform, boots, kepi, soldier, World War I

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Walter Richard Sickert (1860 - 1942)

Title

The Integrity of Belgium

Date

1914

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 92.50 cm, width: 71.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Phillips, 5 November 1991

Inscription

bl: Sickert. 1914.

Provenance

Purchased from the artist by J. L. Rayner; by descent; sold through Phillips, London, on 5 November 1991 (Lot 29); from which sale purchased by the Government Art Collection

GAC number

16778