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'Brighton Pierrots', 1915
by W.R. Sickert
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At first sight, Walter Sickerts
'Brighton Pierrots', 1915 is a visual record of
popular British seaside entertainment at the beginning
of the twentieth century. Pierrot shows had first
appeared in Britain's seaside resorts during the
1890s and offered great holiday family entertainment
with their mixture of singing, dancing, music, acrobatics
and comic sketches.
Despite it being the second year of World War I,
it was business as usual for the pierrot troupes
and while Sickert was in Brighton during August
and September 1915 he went to the show on the beach
near Palace Pier every evening for five weeks. He
made numerous sketches of the performers and later
used these to create his painting of Brighton Pierrots
when he got back to his studio in London.
Sickert has painted the scene as night begins to
fall and the setting sun has turned the sky a dusky
pink. The pierrots perform on a wooden stage, on
the beach with a background of houses on Brighton
seafront. Two performers are standing rather stiffly
at the front of the stage set facing their audience
who are sITEing in deckchairs. The performers are
dressed in ‰comic red suits and straw boater hats
rather than in traditional pierrot costume and are
making a brave effort to make the sparse audience
laugh.
We as viewers are not part of the audience but are
standing to the side of the stage. Consequently
one of the pillars of the stage apparently slices
through the body of the nearest performer. This
may appear awkward but Sickert wants us the viewer
to focus on the pierette in the pink costume playing
the piano at the back of the stage ë who is in turn
staring directly back at us. Both she and the pierrot
in green sITEing near her are wearing traditional
costumes with ruffles round the neck and a conical
shaped hat.
A pierrot show is meant to be fun, despite their
comic brightly coloured costumes none of the performers
seem to be really cheerful ë if anything their body
language is somewhat despondent. Has Sickert deliberately
arranged the figures on the stage in an awkward
way to undermine the perceived ‰joviality of their
performance? The stage is lit by footlights and
by lamps hanging above the stage and the acid colours
of the scene created by the artificial stage lights
add to the unsettling sense of all not being well.
This is all intentional. Sickert is a master in
creating a mood or an atmosphere in his paintings
ë and the context for the mood of the painting is
explicit in the date ë 1915.
Have you noticed the many empty deckchairs in the
audience? Are they perhaps to make us think about
the young men who should be sITEing there enjoying
themselves but in fact, have gone to war? Those
occupied by men with bandaged heads are making reference
to the wounded soldiers from the war. So maybe this
is not simply a visual record of British seaside
entertainment. Sickert also wants us to experience
the mood of the time ë the feeling of tension and
melancholy evoked by the war.
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© Estate of Walter R. Sickert/DACS 2007
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