The London painter's extensive and influential time in Normandy is explored in a major new show at Pallant House in Chichester. We speak to curator Katy Norris

Walter Sickert, L’Hôtel Royal, Dieppe (1894)© Museums Sheffield
The Normandy town boasted visitors from Paris as well as London and became the scene for one of art’s most intriguing rivalries, when Whistler and Degas vied for the attention of upcoming British painter Walter Sickert.
Sickert’s time in Dieppe is the subject of a major show at Pallant House. The surprise element here is not just that the chronicler of Camden Town crossed the Channel, but that he spent years of his life on the other side. As curator Katy Norris says of the show, “it goes right from the age of 25, through to in his 60s. You almost get a kind of survey of his life as well which sees him go all the way to the 1920s”.

Walter Sickert, La Rue Pecquet (1900)© Birmingham Museums Trust on behalf of Birmingham City Council. Image courtesy Birmingham Museums Trust
It was Degas who felt himself to be the better role model for a young painter and, given the place he holds in art history, we might today agree. Sickert “learned draftsmanship from Degas and watched minutely what he was doing”. The older painter, in turn, “really thrived off that idea of a young artist still interested in what he had to offer”.
But Sickert never abandoned the expressive lessons he learned in Whistler’s studio. “He loved the viscosity of the paint and using rich paint, which was not like Impressionism," says Norris. "So he never really sat totally with the impressionists; he hung onto his beginnings all the time as well, you know, the early training under Whistler."

Walter Sickert, The Obelisk (1914)© Peyton Skipwith. Image Courtesy Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal
And if you want to see Sickert cast against type, look no further than his paintings from around the time of the Great War onwards. Painted just 10 miles inland at Envermeu, these are, as Norris points out, “a revelation”. “He’s really not known as somebody who painted outdoors, or who painted beautiful rolling rural landscapes. It’s a complete opposite to the dingy urban Camden town”.
Clearly the French lifestyle gave our painters a certain licence. Sickert took this so far as to enter into a serious relationship with a Dieppoise fisherwoman. “That's totally in character,” Norris claims.
“He lived with her for a few years and looked after her children and actually was writing letters back home. It was definitely a real relationship and a genuine respect that he had for this woman and her life”.

Walter Sickert, The Façade of St Jacques, Dieppe (1902)© Private collection. Image courtesy The Fine Art Society
But it’s doubtful that the Dieppe phenomenon could take off in the wired age we now find ourselves in. “I think generally the world is so connected in lots of different ways now,” says Norris. “People, as much as artists, are losing touch with what’s right in front of them”. It is hard to see Whistler or even Degas exerting quite as much pull over a young artist’s career had they been just Facebook friends.
Along with its great paintings, Sickert in Dieppe offers a chance to relive a time when innocence and geography converged to build an art hub in an unlikely corner of Europe. “They were all of a sudden placed in this different place,” says Norris. “This foreign unfamiliar place where they could kind of let loose, and this was really conducive to creativity.”
- Sickert in Dieppe is at Pallant House, Chichester until October 4 2015. Open 10am-5pm (8pm Thursday, 11am-5pm Sunday, closed Monday). Admission £4.50-£9.
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