Ken looks at the paintings

La Giuseppina Against a Map of Venice: “…a bright spot in the show - a local prostitute, whom he took as a lover, in a colourful pink kimono, vibrant, her hair in preposterous kabuki-like masses”

The Yellow Sleeve “One more spark is the glorious green bed jacket of the prostitute La Chiozzotta”

And an interesting comparison with Bacon “There's a stubborn “Do Not Enter” quality to his paintings. Their aura of exclusion provokes one to persistence. Francis Bacon was smitten with Sickert's bleak renditions of life in the shadows and incorporated his portrait into two of his paintings.”

Sickert is famous as “Some, such as the crime writer Patricia Cornwell, have him down as Jack the Ripper and are calling for a DNA check across the century. What evidence is there? Well, simply from the casual observer's viewpoint, quite a lot. There's no denying that Sickert had a morbid point of view. If not a murderer, then a sufferer of seasonal affective disorder. Surely Venice was never as dull-hued as this. The greens are fungal, the turquoise sky foreboding; he's in love with black”

“…his Camden Town paintings - including the Camden Town Nudes, of naked female bodies on beds with fully dressed men. Riding the tail end of Impressionism, he would become known as the father of British modern art and be hailed in 1930 as the greatest living British painter. Not for him the splashes of exhilaration and optimism that Impressionism can inspire. He saw art as existentialism.”

“Detail is meticulous and architecturally rendered, especially in the series of paintings of St Mark's Basilica. Heavy daubs of paint, intermittent spots of gold, the smudging of close-ups and a wash of dour green create a kind of sickly aura.“