For the first time ever, the four paintings that make up Walter Sickert’s ‘Camden Town murder series’ have been brought together with many other of his nude studies. The paintings, many from private collections, are being shown at the Courtauld Gallery in the lovely Somerset House until 20 january 2008.

Sickert is said to have begun the series after becoming fascinated by the murder of a local prostitute, Emily Dimmock, found in bed with her throat cut. There is nothing so grisly in his paintings, but a more anonymous threat both in terms of the smudged, dark shadows and obscured features of the women and their customers and also in the conditions in which they live and work. There is of course a great tradition of artists using prostitutes as models. The great beauty in Sickert’s paintings is his interest in the social truth of their lives, he doesn’t dress his nudes up as something they are not.

Recently poor old Walter (or ’sick heart’ as someone in my art history class used to call him) was in danger of becoming less well known for his work and more famous for the accusation made by Patricia Cornwell that he was Jack the Ripper. This article in The Guardian goes into more detail about that. Sickert’s attraction to the underbelly of London life always shone a dark light on his reputation but whether or not you believe in the theories, what cannot be denied is his importance as both artist and social commentator.