Sickert: Love, Death & Ennui: The Herbert and Ann Lucas Collection
Piano Nobile is delighted to present for sale The Herbert and Ann Lucas Collection of paintings, drawings and prints by Walter Sickert. It is the most significant collection of Sickert’s work to become available on the market for twenty years. The Lucases were omnivorous collectors whose interests ranged from Attic pottery and Etruscan art to contemporary painting. But it was their abiding interest in twentieth-century British art that led them to form a wide-ranging, scholarly collection of work by Sickert. It was assembled with great care over a long period and came to include the most famous of all Sickert’s compositions, Ennui, which the artist realised in five different oil paintings.
Sickert was one of the most original and provocative printmakers of his generation. At the heart of the Herbert and Ann Lucas Collection is a large group of prints that includes important examples from every period of Sickert’s career as a printmaker. Ever restless to experiment, he mastered a variety of media—lithography, soft- and hard-ground etching, engraving—and deployed them in unexpected combinations. He explored different papers and inks, and reworked his plates with such frequency that certain works were printed in ten different states, some of which exist in unique impressions. The Lucas collection includes multiple impressions and different states of particular prints and provides a rich sense of the haphazard way that Sickert developed his plates.
The exhibition will include an additional group of works including a significant oil on loan from Pallant House Gallery and will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated publication.It follows Piano Nobile’s previous exhibition Sickert: The Theatre of Life, which was held in 2021 and curated with Richard Shone.
Explore the available artworks in the exhibition via the Sickert: Love, Death & Ennui Viewing Room >
For further information and available works please contact the gallery.
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InSight No. 177
Walter Sickert | Ennui October 3, 2025To coincide with Piano Nobile’s current exhibition, InSight considers an important painting at the heart of Herbert and Ann Lucas’s Sickert collection. InSght No. 177...Read more -
Sickert: Love, Death & Ennui — a startling treat of a show
The Times September 30, 2025Nancy Durrant's four star review explores how 'the often overlooked realist painter persuades us with his unembroidered take on daily life'.Read more
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Visual Art: Walter Sickert
The Times (print) September 22, 2025Nancy Durrant's reveiw in the printed edition of The Times describes the exhibition as an interesting and subtle treat of a show.Read more -
Rarely seen Walter Sickert painting to go on sale in London
The Art Newspaper September 15, 2025Richard Brooks' article focuses on the art market interest of the exhibition and the story behind one of the highlights of the show, Ennui.Read more