Walter Sickert: A LifeThe first major life of the outstanding British painter and Jack the Ripper suspect Walter Sickert (1860 1942), by the highly acclaimed biographer of Aubrey Beardsley. Walter Richard Sickert is perhaps the outstanding figure of British art during the last hundred years. Many contemporary painters, from Hodgkin and Bacon to Auerbach and Kossof, acknowledge a debt to his influence. His career spanned six decades of unceasing experiment and achievement.