Walter Sickert: Prints: A Catalogue Raisonne

Walter Sickert (1860–1942) was possibly the most important and influential early modern British artist. He belonged to the generation that absorbed the modernity of late nineteenth-century French art into British painting and printmaking. His outstanding work as a printmaker has been largely overlooked and unexplored until now. This book and catalogue raisonné bring together for the first time the substantial body of 226 prints by Sickert, along with their numerous different states, many in rare or unique impressions, and it reveals the unorthodox and experimental techniques Sickert used frequently “in dialogue” with related paintings and drawings.

Ruth Bromberg describes here the subject matter and techniques for each print in relation to Sickert’s oeuvre. She also discusses the evolution of Sickert’s career in printmaking; the influences on his work of Whistler and Degas, whom Sickert knew; his working procedures; and his innovative techniques and style in engraving, etching, aquatint, soft-ground etching, and lithography. She explores the varied settings of his prints, which include early London and Dieppe street scenes, seascapes in Holland, and famous views of Venice, as well as those of the music hall (a lifelong passion), numerous portraits, and his controversial pictures of shabby interiors depicting nude prostitutes and clothed men.


Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Ruth Bromberg, an independent American scholar, lives in London, where she was director of Colnaghi’s print department from 1983 to 1986. She is the author of a catalogue raisonné, Canaletto’s Etchings, and a contributor to numerous exhibition catalogues.