Lot 192: EDWARD DRUMMOND YOUNG 1876-1946 PORTRAIT OF WALTER SICKERT

ARTIST'S NATIONALITY Scottish DETAILED DESCRIPTION platinum print, credited and titled on a typewritten label and with International Salon of Photography, Stockholm, and Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, labels, on the reverse, circa 1918 ( Portrait of a Killer, unpaginated) EXHIBITED F örsta Internationella, Fotografiska Salongen, Stockholm, October 1926 The Toronto Salon, Thirty-Eighth Annual Salon of Pictorial Photography, Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, August-September 1929 CATALOGUE NOTE British impressionist painter Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) was one of the best-known artists of his day and, according to the Grove Dictionary of Art, ' was one of the most influential British artists of this century.' After attending art school, Sickert was an assistant to James McNeill Whistler, from whom he learned to work quickly and to strive for a unified design in his work. Also a friend of Degas, Sickert is known for his landscapes, music hall and theater scenes, and domestic interiors in which women are clothed or often, nude. In her book, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed, Patricia Cornwell posits that Sickert was actually Jack the Ripper. During her 18-month investigation, the author used current forensic techniques, including mitochondrial DNA testing, to examine what evidence remains from the murders, primarily some 250 letters thought to be from the Ripper. Her suspicion regarding Sickert was also heightened by a series of paintings he made based on the murder of a Camden Town prostitute. Cornwell says they are similar to the autopsy photographs taken of some of the Ripper's victims and therefore indicate first-hand knowledge of the murders. According to Edinburgh Photographic Society historian Peter Stubbs, Scottish portrait photographer Edward Drummond Young (1877-1946), son and business partner of William Drummond Young, was trained, as was his father, as a painter and photographer. A member of the Edinburgh Photographic Society, he regularly lectured at the society's gatherings about portraiture and composition and wrote the book, The Art of the Photographer (London, 1929) .

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