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The Height of the Season

Walter Richard Sickert

European Art

Sickert explores the meeting of sea and overcast sky in this image of the beach at Dieppe, a resort town on the coast of Normandy. While using a vertically oriented format, Sickert cleanly divides his composition into flat, horizontal bands and applies the blue green of the calm sea and the gray of the low-hanging clouds in thick but evenly applied strokes that run the width of the panel. Although Sickert defines the horizon line with linear precision, he reveals a lighter, more improvisational touch in the puffy white clouds, the patch of blue sky, and the throngs of holiday makers who mark the water’s edge.
MEDIUM Oil on panel
  • Place Made: France
  • DATES 1885
    DIMENSIONS 12 1/2 × 9 1/8 × 1/8 in. (31.8 × 23.2 × 0.3 cm) frame: 23 × 20 × 2 1/2 in. (58.4 × 50.8 × 6.4 cm)  (show scale)
    SIGNATURE Signed lower right: "Sickert."
    INSCRIPTIONS Verso upper left: "10 Rue Sygogne/20 mil (?) Vernis"
    COLLECTIONS European Art
    ACCESSION NUMBER 18.37
    CREDIT LINE Gift of Ferdinand Gottschalk
    MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
    CAPTION Walter Richard Sickert (British, born Germany 1860-1942). The Height of the Season, 1885. Oil on panel, 12 1/2 × 9 1/8 × 1/8 in. (31.8 × 23.2 × 0.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Ferdinand Gottschalk, 18.37. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 18.37_SL1.jpg)
    IMAGE overall, 18.37_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
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