Walter Sickert’s “Camden Town Nudes” are being displayed together at The Courtault Institute, within Somerset House.
This short series of gloomy, ambiguous paintings displays a remarkable atmosphere of listlessness, exhausted prostitutes in dull, grubby rooms. I had thought they were influenced directly by the report of a murder of a prostitute in 1907. However, Sickert had already painted and sketched some, with airily innocent titles such as “A Summer Afternoon” and “What Shall We Do About THe Rent?”, the latter of a naked, prone woman on a bed, a clothed man, arms folded, looming over her, as if in resigned conversation. Given the alternative title Sickert later applied to it, “Camden Town Murder 1″, the opportunity for reappraising and rereading are clear.
I think it is this provocative, playful ambiguity that is the real strength of the series. One sketch, although otherwise the same as the finished painting, is entirely altered by replacing the standing man with a woman. The composition remains the same, but it becomes a relaxed chat between two women, their relationship unclear but both quite comfortable with one’s complete nudity.
Motifs through the series include the women’s exhausted, outstretched hand as she lays on the bed; the attention to detail of the room’s furnishings – the shapes on the wallpaper, the glint of sun on the iron bedstead. More worrying, though, is the near total absence of any facial features on the women – their face is invariably reduced to a smudge of paint. Is their identity insignificant, or do they symbolise a wider membership of women? Or is their very anonymity a comment on the shadowy and nameless underworld they inhabit?
The studies of the rooms themselves are highly accurate, if not richly detailed. Sickert rented rooms and used models for his work. Another nice feature is the range of styles he uses in such a small series – 16 paintings here, including the sketches and drafts. One is drawn in pastels, a thick, spidery layering resulting in a sympatheti porrait if a behatted kady looking in a mirror at her rumpled bedsheets. The next one on the wall is a pool of dark green and browns so murky it barely constitutes a figurative study. He appears to work quickly, with rapid, long brush strokes cleasrly visible. His nudes are detached and unemotional; all but one are plump yet delicately positioned.
A great opportunity to admire these painting together. Plus it’s on the top floor, and the Courthauld Institute is a thing of semcircular beauty.