A rarely seen private collection of paintings, drawings and prints by Walter Sickert (1860–1942) has gone on display in London.
The collection was assembled by American art collectors Herbert and Ann Lucas and is now being offered for sale by their estate, while also being on display for public viewing.
Walter Sickert was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group, a Post-Impressionist art movement in early 20th-century London. Many of his works are in leading galleries, but what the Lucases collected were often the preparatory sketches or his prints, which offer a new way of seeing how the artist composed his famous paintings.
So rather than chasing trophy pieces, the Lucases sought to understand Sickert in his full complexity – the draftsman, the printmaker, the chronicler of urban melancholy and everyday theatre. The result is an intimate yet comprehensive portrait of an artist who has long resisted easy classification.
As an exhibition, it is helpful to know some of his works, but a sheet with notes is also handed out to visitors, which helps a bit. Even if you don’t know his work, there are often clusters of sketches of what is obviously going to be a single painting, so you can see some of the evolution at work.
The centrepiece of the exhibition is the Lucas version of Ennui, one of five iterations of Sickert’s celebrated meditation on the tedium of marital life.
There’s also a good collection of sketches that were drawn for printmakers to sell, and the artist often worked closely with the printers to ensure his drawings could be translated into the printer’s press without losing details. A closer look at the originals and the prints shows the subtle differences between the two.
Downstairs, more of his landscape pieces have been included, particularly from his visit to Dieppe.
As a collection, it’s somewhat less daunting than if it had been of his finished paintings, so it’s easier to visit and see a side of an artist usually only seen in the bigger galleries.
The exhibition, Sickert Love, Death & Ennui: The Herbert and Ann Lucas Collection is at Piano Nobile until 18th December 2025 and is free to visit.
The gallery is a short walk from Holland Park tube station (Central line) and is open Tuesday to Saturday.