The Camden Town Group in Context

ISBN 978-1-84976-385-1

Performance and popular fiction

Walter Richard Sickert 'Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford' 1892
Walter Richard Sickert
Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford 1892
Tate T02039
© Tate
Discussing the value of narrative Sickert famously said, ‘All the greater draughtsmen tell a story’. He and other artists in the Camden Town Group were attracted to theatres and musical halls as spectacles in their own right and as sources of ‘slice of life’ drama.
Many plays and novels in the period were concerned with the experience of modernity in the city, often in relation to lower middle and working class lives.
Essays in this section examine those literary tendencies and consider, too, the relationship between particular paintings by Walter Sickert and theatrical productions of the period dealing with women’s independence, class and social mobility.

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How to cite

‘Performance and popular fiction’, in Helena Bonett, Ysanne Holt, Jennifer Mundy (eds.), The Camden Town Group in Context, Tate Research Publication, May 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/performance-and-popular-fiction-r1105710, accessed 19 March 2024.