Output details

Questions of Artistic Identity, Self-Fashioning and Social Referencing in the Work of the Camden Town Group

This 9200 word, peer-reviewed online article examines questions of class, character and social identity in the work of Walter Sickert and other Camden Town painters. The article developed from a paper entitled ‘Reconfiguring artistic identity in the metropolis: London referencing and cosmopolitanism in the paintings of Walter Sickert and the Camden Town Group, c. 1905-14’ delivered at the ‘Sites of Internationalism at the Fin de Siècle: Between Metropolis and Cosmopolis’ conference, Northumbria University with the International Cultural Exchange Network, Universities of York and Bristol, Newcastle upon Tyne (September 2010). See http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/static/5007/sasspdf/Sitesprog).

Examining the Camden Town Group’s self-portraits, portraits of artist-colleagues and the depiction of artists’ studios, art galleries and their London social venues, the article demonstrates how the available repertoires for artist’ public self-fashioning were being updated and revised between c.1905–14. It shows how these modernising forms offered new ways of approaching contemporary group formations as well as narrating artists’ lives, lifestyles and their place in the modern experience of the city. In particular, it reveals that Sickert’s specific London (self-) identification alongside the sense that he was in touch with popular culture and working class life reiterated an eclectic yet distinctive approach; it was one that was central to the Camden Town Group’s claims for visibility and authority within the pre-Great War English artistic avant-garde. The essay was one of the research outcomes of the Tate’s and Getty Foundation On-line Scholarly Initiative funded research project based at Tate Britain from 2007 into the Camden Town Group, whose findings were disseminated with the launch of the website in 2012. Stephenson was involved as an Academic Consultant and as a member of the Editorial Board of the Camden Town Group On-line Research Project.