Nancy Durrant's four star review explores how "the often overlooked realist painter persuades us with his unembroidered take on daily life". >
Love and death are, said Walter Sickert, “the only two subjectsof great art”. Except that, as this lovely exhibition at PianoNobile in London shows, he was particularly gifted at theexpression of another.
Sickert's “ennui” is the rarely depicted, ambiguous baselinestate of humanity — neither joy nor despair, neither comfort norfear. This almost perverse absence of drama, at a time whenRoyal Academicians were still producing vast, theatrical historypaintings, is one thing that makes Sickert a true radical.
...
September 30, 2025
