Murder, Mayhem, Mystery & Paint: The Disturbing Story of Walter Sickert

 

 

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS LECTURE HAS BEEN CANCELLED

Wednesday 3 June 2020

Michael Howard

Michael is a familiar face to The Arts Society Fylde. He is President of The Arts Society Bolton and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Although retired, he continues to teach at the Manchester School of Art. He has published widely on European art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, his books include: L. S. Lowry: A Visionary ArtistThe Impressionists by ThemselvesThe Stations of the Cross / The Captive Figure and the award-winning dramatic interpretation and publication of material originally performed by the Zurich-based Dadaists of 1916. A New Order: An Evening at the Cabaret Voltaire. His book on Gauguin was written in association with the Gauguin Museum, Tahiti, and his book on Monet for the Musée Marmottan, Paris.  One of his most recent books concerns his wife’s life and work: The Human Touch: Ghislaine Howard. (Ghislaine is also an accredited lecturer of The Arts Society).

Michael is a practising artist, and has exhibited at the Royal Academy, the New York Art Fair and elsewhere. He is represented in Manchester Art Gallery and in many private collections both here and abroad. He has appeared on television and radio many times, and in 2004 he and Ghislaine worked the film, Degas and the Dance, which was awarded one of the prestigious Peabody awards.

Walter Sickert, one of the most celebrated of English artists working at the turn of the last century, is often considered to be ‘a painter’s painter’. The well-known crime writer Patricia Cornwell has claimed this much-loved artist was responsible for the murders attributed to the infamous Jack the Ripper. This lecture will attempt to untangle the truth of this claim following a trail of murder, mystery, mayhem and paint.  Was this much-loved, colourful and enigmatic painter Jack the Ripper? Come and judge the evidence for yourselves!

 

Caption: La Giuseppina, the Ring, by Walter Sickert. Wikimedia Commons