The papers of Walter Sickert

The collection consists of letters from Walter Sickert to Andrina Schweder (nee Angus), William Marchant, Elizabeth Angus and J. H. Angus, and letters from Christine Sickert and George Moore to Walter Sickert. It also includes drawings by Walter Sickert, Christine Sickert and Thérèse Lessore , two prints by Sylvia Gosse, photographs of Sickert and Angus family members, and a small painting of Sickert's father. The majority of the drawings and many of the letters were produced in Dieppe, France.

Walter Sickert married Christine Angus in 1911, having divorced his first wife Ellen Cobden in 1899. Christine Angus was the daughter of a Scottish leather merchant and a former pupil at Rowlandson House, the school founded by Sickert. They spent their honeymoon in Dieppe where Sickert sold his house at Neuville and purchased the Villa d'Aumale at Envermeu. When they returned to London they lived in Harrington Square and then Gloucester Crescent, Sickert keeping a room in Mornington Crescent and a studio at Rowlandson House.

In 1914 the outbreak of the war forced them to cut short their annual holiday to Dieppe. Sickert closed Rowlandson House, but held a teaching post at the Westminster Technical Institute, gave private classes, and exhibited with the Camden Town Group. Instead of Dieppe, they spent the summer of 1915 in Chagford and Devon and went to Bath in 1916 and 1917. They moved to Camden Road in 1917.

When the war ended they sold the Villa d'Aumale and purchased the Maison Mouton, formerly a gendarmerie. Christine fell ill not long afterwards, in Dieppe, and they went to London for medical treatment. But in October 1920, having returned to Dieppe, Christine finally died of consumption. Sickert suffered the loss heavily, and for a while lived in Dieppe on his own. Thérèse Lessore, another painter, became close to him and in 1926 they married, living in Islington from 1927.

The collection has been arranged into the following series

8120/1 Correspondence

8120/2 Photographs and miniature of Sickert and Angus family members

8120/3 Drawings and illustrations by Walter Sickert

8120/4 Drawings by Christine Angus

8120/5 Drawings by Thérèse Lessore

8120/6 Etchings and illustration by Sylvia Gosse

Open. Access to all registered researchers.