Sickert and His Contemporaries at the Ashmolean

Sickert and the Camden Town Group

This room, titled "Sickert and His Contemporaries," brings together works by Walter Sickert and the painters gathered around him in London in the 1900s-1920s — a pupil of Whistler and an admirer of Degas whom he met on his Paris trips, Sickert hosted informal gatherings at his Camden Town studio that gave rise to the group of the same name, active across three exhibitions between 1911 and 1912.

1. Five versions of the same couple, and a Virginia Woolf essay

Ennui is the last of at least five versions Walter Sickert painted on the same theme: a man smokes a cigar, indifferent, while a woman seated beside him stares blankly at a case of stuffed birds. The models for the very first version, exhibited in 1914, were Hubby, an old schoolfriend of Sickert's who had fallen on hard times and whom the painter long supported, and Marie Hayes, who modeled for him on several occasions. The version held at the Ashmolean, considered by several critics to be the finest of the series, replaces the bare walls of the original with patterned wallpaper and brighter colors.

In 1934, the writer Virginia Woolf published an essay, "Walter Sickert: A Conversation," partly inspired by this painting: in it she invents a whole backstory to explain the heavy silence between the two figures, praising Sickert as a painter who tells stories without ever needing words.

2. Gore and Bevan, modern life away from central London

Spencer Gore's Cinder Path, painted in 1912, shows a path that linked the old market town of Baldock to the end of Works Road in Letchworth — the garden city where Gore was staying that summer with his painter friend Harold Gilman. The bold, unmodulated patches of pure color reveal the interest in modern French painting Gore was discovering at the time.

Robert Bevan's Showing at Tattersalls, painted around 1919, shows one of Britain's leading horse sales, where the elite of the racing world came to find its next Grand National winner. The subject — cab horses, stables, horse sales — was suggested to Bevan by Sickert himself, in keeping with the Camden Town Group's interest in ordinary urban life rather than noble subjects.

3. Sickert, a second look: Ethel Sands and the Brighton Pierrots

Sickert's Portrait of Ethel Sands, painted in 1913-14, shows a wealthy heiress and painter in her own right, whose family fortune came from her grandfather's patent remedy for dysentery. Sickert was close to the Sands family; Ethel and her brother Morton were among the most important collectors of his work during his lifetime.

Sickert's Brighton Pierrots, painted in 1915, shows a beach show seen at an angle and slightly from behind, with spectators and empty deckchairs under a vividly red evening sky. Painted in the middle of the First World War, the picture captures Brighton's particular mood at the time — a holiday destination without any holiday spirit, the young men having gone to the front and the distant sound of guns carrying across the Channel.

4. Gwen John, the silent convalescent

Gwen John's The Convalescent, painted between 1923 and 1924, shows a young woman seated in a wicker chair, absorbed in reading a book or paper resting on her lap — one of the subjects the artist returned to several times in her studio in Meudon, near Paris. The sitter's identity remains unknown, but the almost solemn stillness of the pose fits the rest of this room, built entirely around figures caught in a silence that says a great deal.

5. Gilman, Mrs Mounter's blue wallpaper

Interior with Mrs Mounter, painted by Harold Gilman in 1916-1917, shows his landlady at 47 Maple Street, near Tottenham Court Road, where the painter lodged between the failure of his first marriage and his remarriage to Sylvia Hardy in 1917. Gilman appears to have been particularly attached to the garish blue wallpaper of this flat: it recurs in several of his interiors painted in the same period.

A founding member of the Camden Town Group alongside Sickert, Gore and Bevan, Gilman pushed the group's palette toward brighter colours and thicker brushwork, under the influence of French Post-Impressionism he encountered on a trip to Paris with Ginner in 1911 — a shift that gradually set him apart from Sickert's darker naturalism.

6. Gallery 65, next door — Camille Pissarro, Lucien’s father

The links between Room 63 and Pissarro run through Lucien Pissarro, son of the Impressionist painter and an artist associated with the Camden Town circle. In the neighbouring gallery (65, devoted to Pissarro), View from My Window in Cloudy Weather (Camille Pissarro, 1886-1888, oil on canvas) shows his brief experimentation with the painstaking Pointillist technique. Sunset in Éragny, Autumn (1902, oil on canvas) was painted the year before his death.

How much time

Look for the woman's blank stare in Ennui, turned toward the case of stuffed birds — it is the detail that fascinated Virginia Woolf most. Allow a little over an hour for the room's seven paintings and the two Pissarros in the next gallery.

Background on Sickert and the Camden Town Group — 5 minutes.
Ennui (Sickert) — 8 minutes.
Cinder Path (Gore) — 6 minutes.
Showing at Tattersalls (Bevan) — 6 minutes.
Portrait of Ethel Sands (Sickert) — 6 minutes.
Brighton Pierrots (Sickert) — 6 minutes.
The Convalescent (Gwen John) — 6 minutes.
Interior with Mrs Mounter (Gilman) — 6 minutes.
View from My Window in Cloudy Weather (Camille Pissarro, Gallery 65) — 6 minutes.
Sunset in Éragny, Autumn (Camille Pissarro, Gallery 65) — 6 minutes.

Sources and verification

Checked against the official notices of the Ashmolean Museum (ashmolean.org) and cross-checked with Wikipedia EN/FR.

Displays and room openings can change. Check the Ashmolean Museum website on the day of your visit before following a route.

Continue your visit

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The room where the founders hang Portraits of the collectors, an alchemist and astrologers who built the museum. Uccello’s last known painting A night hunt in perfect perspective, next to an unattributable Madonna.

Listen to the commentary in the gallery

This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.

Ennui, the painting that inspired a Virginia Woolf essay