Mrs Sickert

Jacques-Emile Blanche 1861 - 1942

Summary

Three-quarter length frontal portrait of Mrs Sickert, an elderly lady dressed in a black bonnet that is tied with a black ribbon around her neck. She is seated before a table with her hands resting in her lap. There are many ornamental objects on the mantelpiece behind her, most easily decipherable are the china dogs and the clock. The painting is created in a loose style, the individual brushstrokes are vividly represented.

Display Label

Miss Winny MacEwan about 1905 Jacques-Émile Blanche 1861-1942 Oil on canvas Blanche was a French artist who visited England every year, equally at home in the social and cultural worlds of London and Paris. He gave painting lessons, and one of his favourite pupils was Miss Winny MacEwan. He called her a ‘candid soul’ and ‘the happiest creature I ever had in my class’, capturing her frank and joyful nature here in her questioning gaze. Blanche gives an endearing portrait of MacEwan in his memoirs as the youngest of three sisters, ‘timid creatures’ who inherited unexpected wealth in middle age. MacEwan was suddenly able to fulfil her dream of becoming an artist, and she travelled all over the world, painting Rajahs and Colonial Governors in uniform. She was never professionally successful, which she attributed to her style having an unfashionable ‘feminine touch’. Gift of Miss Helen J MacEwan 1936.366