Hampstead

Hampstead (1913) at Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums shows Sickert engaging with one of London's most historically significant residential districts during a period when he was deeply involved with the Camden Town Group, which had begun its exhibitions in 1911. Hampstead was notable in early twentieth-century London as a hub of artistic and intellectual life — it was home to many writers, artists, and progressive thinkers, and its village character preserved within the larger city gave it a distinctive social atmosphere. Sickert's connection to Hampstead may have been professional, social, or purely pictorial: the district's varied architecture, its mix of Georgian terraces and Victorian villas, and its position on a hill overlooking the city made it different in character from the Camden Town streets he was most associated with. Aberdeen's Sickert holdings document his London as well as his French subjects, and Hampstead provides evidence of the range of his urban observation beyond the specific Camden Town district that gave its name to his circle. The 1913 date places this within the Camden Town Group's most active period, when Sickert was also exhibiting internationally and developing his theoretical writing on photography and painting.

Oil on canvas with Sickert's mature tonal method applied to London residential architecture. The Hampstead subject likely involves terraces or villas in the district's characteristic vernacular style. Warm and cool tonal passages build up the brick and stucco surfaces with Sickert's characteristic layered transparency.