Walter Richard Sickert, 1860–1942, British, born in Germany
Title:
The Camden Town Murder, or What Shall We Do for the Rent?
Date:
ca. 1908
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
10 1/16 × 14 inches (25.6 × 35.6 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Signed, lower right: "Sickert"
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Copyright Status:
Copyright Undetermined
Accession Number:
B1979.37.1
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
historical subject | nude | costume | bed | wallpaper | prostitute | woman | man | interior | Impressionist | brushstrokes | murder | death
Associated Places:
United Kingdom | England | Camden | Greater London | Camden Town
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
Walter Sickert (Tate Britain, 2022-04-25 - 2022-09-18)Edwardian Opulence (Yale Center for British Art, 2013-02-28 - 2013-06-02)The Camden Town Group (Tate Britain) (Tate Britain, 2008-02-13 - 2008-05-05)Walter Sickert - The Camden Town Nudes (The Courtauld Gallery, 2007-10-25 - 2008-01-20)Revisiting Traditions [BAC 20th century painting & sculpture] (Yale Center for British Art, 2002-04-30 - 2005-05-18)Bloomsbury Contemporaries (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-05-20 - 2000-09-03)20th Century Paintings and Sculpture (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-01-27 - 2000-04-30)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998-05-01 - 1998-07-05)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Queensland Art Gallery, 1998-07-15 - 1998-09-06)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1998-09-16 - 1998-11-15)Walter Richard Sickert (RA) (Royal Academy of Arts, 1992-11-18 - 1993-02-14)Twentieth Century British Art Featuring Twenty Artists (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., 1990-11-10 - 1991-01-05)British Painters and Sculptors 1905 to 1930 (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., 1987-11-14 - 1988-01-09)
Publications:
Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977-1986 : Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1986, pp. 9, 19, no. 51, fig. 11, N590.2 .A7 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Brian Allen, Towards a modern art world, Vol. 1, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, New Haven, 1995, fig. 34, N6420 T68 1995 (YCBA)W. Archer, Walter Sickert: The High and the Low, Apollo, Vol. 104, No.173, July 1976, pp. 73-74, N1 A54 + (YCBA)Wendy Baron, Sickert Paintings, Royal Academy of Arts, London & New Haven, 1992, no. 69, NJ18 Si12 B372 1992 (YCBA)Wendy Baron, Sickert, Phaidon, London, 1973, pp. 108, 348, no. 269, fig. 192, NJ18 Si12 +B37 Oversize (YCBA)Wendy Baron, The Camden Town Group, Scholar Press, London, 1979, pp. 278-79, 281, no. 106, ND468.5 C35 B376 + (YCBA)John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, p. 32, fig. 5, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)David Bindman, The History of British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2008, pp. 85-86 (vol. 3), fig. 54, N6761 +H57 2008 Oversize (YCBA)British Modernist art, 1905-1930, November 14, 1987-January 9, 1988. , Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1987, pp. 8-9, 43, no. 37, N6768.5 M63 B75 1987 (YCBA)Emma Chambers, Walter Sickert, Tate Publishing, London, p. 172, fig. 123, NJ18.Si12 A12 2022+ (YCBA)D. Corbett, Gross Material Facts: Sexuality, Identity and the City in Walter Sickert, Art History, v. 21, March 1998, pp. 45-64, N1 A75 (YCBA) Also available online (Orbis).Richard Cork, The Very Painting of Our Fear, Walter Sickert's short-lived obsession with death and the "gross-material facts" , TLS, the Times Literary Supplement, Issue no. 5293, September 10, 2004, p. 17, Film S748 (SML) Also Available Online in TLS Historical ArchiveMalcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 202-203, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA)Rebecca Daniels, Walter Sickert and Urban Realism, Ordinary Life and Tragedy in Camden Town , British Art Journal, vol. 3, no. 2, Spring 2002, pp. 58-69, N6761 B74 + (YCBA)Rebecca Daniels, Walter Sickert: London, Burlington Magazine, vol. 150, January 2008, p. 45-6, N1 B87 + (YCBA) Available online through JSTORCharles Harrison, English art and modernism, 1900-1939, Allen Lane, London Indiana University Press, 1981, p. 351, no. 21, N6768 H37 1981 (YCBA)Luke Herrmann, Nineteenth century British painting, Giles de la Mare, London, 2000, p. 391, no. 237, ND467 H47 2000 (YCBA)Timothy Hyman, Sickert's Evasive Blur, from the fudged feature to a weird discovery , TLS, the Times Literary Supplement, Issue no. 4683, January 1, 1983, p. 14, Film S748 (SML) Also Available Online in TLS Historical ArchiveJulia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden : Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, p. 174, no. 71, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)James Merlin Ingli, London and Amsterdam Sickert, Burlington Magazine, v. 135,n0.1080, March 1993, pp. 231-33, N1 B87 + (YCBA) Available online in JSTOR.Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 1, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Lucy Merello Peterson, The women who Inspired London Art: The Avico Sisters and Other Models of the Early 20th Century, Pen and Sword Books, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, p. 66, N7574.5.G7 P47 2018 (LC) (YCBA)Lucien Pissarro, Lucien Pissarro et le post-impressionisme anglais, Harold Gilman, Spencer F. Gore, Lucien Pissarro, Walter R. Sickert : Musâee de Pontoise, 28 novembre 1998-7 mars 1999, Chãateau-Musâee de Dieppe, 27 mars 1999-6 juin 1999 , Musée de Pontoise, Pontoise, France, 1998, NJ18 P681 L83 1008 (YCBA)Duncan Robinson, Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977 - 1986, , Burlington Magazine, vol. 128, October 1986, pp. 9, 19, no. 51, fig. 11, N1 .B87 128:3 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Samuel Shaw, Narrative and Anti-Narrative [Website], Accessed March 2, 2016, p. 7 of 13, http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/in-focus/the-dolls-house-william-rothenstein/narrative-and-anti-narrativeJon Shirland, The Pill in the Jam of Modern Art, Masculinity, Visual Pleasure and Social Positioning in Walter Sickert's Camden Town Murder Series , Object, no. 2, 1999/2000, p. 58, fig. 7, N7475 )35 (YCBA)Richard Shone, Walter Sickert, Phaidon, Oxford, 1988, pl. 38, NJ18 Si12 S56 (YCBA)The Courtauld Gallery, Walter Sickert, The Camden Town nudes , London, 2007, pp. 45-52, 86-7, cat. no. 15, , NJ18 Si12 A12 2007 (YCBA)Lisa Tickner, Modern life & modern subjects, British art in the early twentieth century , Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 2000, no. 8, ND468 T53 2000 (YCBA)Angus Trumble, Edwardian opulence, British art at the dawn of the twentieth century , Yale University Press, New Haven, 2013, p. 357, cat. no. 95, N6768 .E39 2013 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Robert Upstone, Modern painters, the Camden Town Group , Tate Publishing, London, 2008, no. 68, ND468.5.C35 M63 2008 + (YCBA)Colin Wiggins, Post-impressionism, Dorling Kindersley, London New York, 1993, p. 51, ND547.5 P6 W54 1993 (YCBA)John Wilmerding, Essays in honor of Paul Mellon, collector and benefactor : Essays, , National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC & Hanover, NH, 1986, p. 264, fig. 5, N7442.2 M455 1986 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
This is one of several paintings Walter Sickert made in response to a gruesome murder of a prostitute that took place in Camden, North London, in September 1907. Sickert, who had worked in the area for several years, was intrigued by the unsolved case, using the title The Camden Town Murder for a group of paintings between 1908 and 1909. None of these works depict an actual murder, with the woman in this painting popularly supposed to be sleeping rather than dead. Sickert's use of the alternative title in parentheses—a wry parody of Victorian narrative paintings—confirms the artist’s refusal to confirm a single meaning for this enigmatic picture. What is never in doubt, however, is Sickert’s commitment to subject matter that many of his contemporaries would have seen as sordid, rendered in a markedly modern style. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016