Annual Lecture: Sickert and the Art of Music Hall: Mall Galleries

Alison Young will be giving this year’s NEAC Annual Lecture, ‘Sickert and the Art of Music Hall’, sponsored by Panter & Hall.

 "In my forthcoming NEAC lecture, I will be looking at the history of the music halls and Sickert’s interactions with them; examining the lives of some of the performers in his works; and the artists working in sheet music and black-and-white illustration, many of whom Sickert admired" - Alison Young

When Sickert first exhibited at the New English Art Club in 1888, he displayed ‘Gatti’s Hungerford Palace of Varieties. Second Turn of Katie Lawrence’ (pictured). The critical reception this work met was similar to that which had greeted the exhibition of ‘Le Mammoth Comique’ at the Suffolk Street Galleries the year before. These are some of the words that populated the reviews of both pictures: vulgar, eccentric, unexpected, astonishing, grotesque, roaring, coarse, commonplace and tawdry. Why were Sickert’s paintings so badly received at the time and why did they provoke such an indignant reaction?

Alison Young is a former solicitor, writer and researcher of Music Hall (having been inspired by family connections to performers) as well as the Secretary of the British Music Hall Society. She blogs at musichallalice.wordpress.com and is working towards a book on the subject.

Dates & times

Wednesday 30 June 2021 at 3pm 

Book for 2:30pm on Wednesday 30 June, to make sure you are in the gallery in time for the talk to start.

Price

Sponsored by Panter & Hall

Image: Walter Sickert, Gatti’s Hungerford Palace of Varieties. Second Turn of Katie Lawrence. Photo: Yale University Art Gallery