We are continually told that biography is the dominant literary expression of the age, that Britain, in particular, is a nation of biographers, and that the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is the massive climax of this protracted love affair. Even our fiction suppurates with real-life figures both past and present, from Mrs Thrale and Charles Lamb to Henry James, Alma Cogan and Baroness Thatcher. Biographies of politicians and adventurers, duchesses and spies, consorts and comedians hog the limelight on the publishers’ seasonal lists. But artists receive only sporadic attention. It is true that most of the leading British painters and sculptors have been ‘done’, some more than once, but they are not the easiest of subjects. With a few marvellous exceptions, they do not leave behind a mass of letters and papers for the biographer to chew on; the silent hours of the studio — the mainspring of their existence — invariably go unrecorded.
One of the marvellous exceptions is Walter Sickert (1860-1942). In his lifetime and increasingly in the last 60 years, art historians, biographers and memoirists have been captivated by his life and work. As in his own conversation and letters, in which facts were never allowed to obstruct a telling fantasy or self-serving exaggeration, the studies of his life have been entertaining rather than newly informative or accurate. Matthew Sturgis has now put this to rights in a truly comprehensive, grand-sweep biography of over 750 pages, 100 of which contain footnotes and sources that reveal the huge foundation stone of his research.
There are numerous reasons why Sickert is a dream figure for a biographer. His character was rich and complex; he left copious private letters and a fat volume of his collected reviews and articles, strewn with autobiographical asides.
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