English Echo Series, the pioneer works of the interwar period by Walter Richard Sickert

Abstract

The English Echo Series painted by Walter Richard Sickert (1860–1940) from 1927 to 1940 was a series of oil paintings based on illustrations printed in Victorian newspapers and magazines. As its name \u27echo\u27 suggests, the series has a special characteristic: something like a foretelling of the pop art of the postwar period. However, modernists in the British artistic circle and art critics of newspapers in those days clearly disdained Echoes and Sickert. In the 21th century, art researchers have consequently started to re-evaluate the series and told the theory wherein criticism by British modernists such as members of the Bloomsbury group attributed evil influences to the study of Sickert and Echoes in the 20th century and the series acquired a negative reputation. This theory became common in previous research; in particular, the newest study of Echoes by Merlin Seller explains the history in which criticism written by Roger Eliot Fry (1866–1934) in 1925 triggered the attack on Echoes and Sickert. However, he art theory written by Fry in his later years obviously indicated an affinity for Echoes. In addition, the timing of Fry putting forward the theory was a few years after the first exhibition of Echoes. These facts indicate that Sickert, who was conservative about English traditional paintings and Victorian popular art, was more advanced regarding the practice of reproduction art than Fry, who seemed to be the foremost British modernist of the interwar period. For verification of the history of Echoes told in previous research, this essay will begin by analyzing criticism of the series by British modernists and studies of Echoes in the 20th century. Secondly, I will summarize Fry\u27s criticism of Sickert, which was regarded by Seller as a beginning of the attacks on Echoes and indicates points of difference between Fry\u27s theory and other British modernists\u27 criticisms. Next, through the features of the series and British modernists\u27 ideology, I will state the reasons behind Echoes\u27 negative reputation. Finally, based on photographs of Echoes that I took in Britain, I will explain the affinity between the series and Fry\u27s theory

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