ART / Critical round-up

SICKERT AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY

'It is not that every picture in the very well chosen exhibition succeeds - Sickert is far too experimental and ambitious an artist for that - but that he brought his own quirky intellect, humour and feel for the craft of painting to everything on view.' Richard Dorment, Daily Telegraph.

'Too English for the French, who remain largely ignorant of him, too French for the English to accommodate readily, Sickert is still something of an odd-man-out, sui generis.' William Packer, FT.

'(Sickert) saw the stuffed birds in the glass dome, the hefty potential victim. While Augustus John and his swan- necked retinue went gypsy caravanning, Sickert grubbed around in genuine headline material.' William Feaver, Observer.

'He was always an uneven painter, and some of the show's weakest pictures date from this difficult period. Then, quite suddenly, he used a photograph of himself eating cereal as the basis of a wonderfully energetic canvas called Lazarus breaks his fast.' Richard Cork, Times.

'Sickert was not a great painter because he was an innovator, but because through all his innovations he managed to achieve one thing. He painted with immense feeling, without ever turning lachrymose.' Andrew Graham-Dixon, Independent.