Painter

Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom is a 1907 oil on canvas Impressionist painting by artist Walter Sickert

Walter was the founder of Camden Town Group,(a group of artists that painted realistic scenes of
city life and landscapes in a range of post-impressionist styles in the early 20th century) Sickert’s
work is characterized by its atmospheric quality and its focus on everyday subjects, including
portraits, street scenes, and interiors.

Painting
Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom was inspired by the Whitechapel Murders and was painted 16 years
after the murders ended.

(The Whitechapel murders, also known as the Jack the Ripper murders, were a series of brutal
and unsolved killings that occurred in the Whitechapel area of London, England in 1888. The
murders targeted 5 women who were working as prostitutes and were characterized by their
gruesome nature, with the victims often being mutilated and disemboweled.
The killings caused a sensation in the media and led to widespread fear and panic in London. The
killer, who became known as Jack the Ripper, was never caught or identified, and his identity
remains a mystery to this day.)

Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom is an imaginary vision by Walter Sickert, referring directly to the
Ripper murders. This painting combined with Walter's egoistic and misogynist nature created
many theories about Sickert’s involvement with the case of the Whitechapel Murders and is the
reason why he was studied after his death by analysts of the Jack the Ripper case

Analysis
Painted in vague splotches of color taken from a narrow range of pigments (black brown and
red), the painting seemingly shows a doorway into a room. Inside, in the middle, at some
distance, in front of a blinded window, stands a male figure all in black — with no head.
According to the painting title, we assume the man is The Ripper. He is depicted without a head.
The missing head, which would most clearly indicate the man’s identity, suggests that Sickert,
just like the rest of us, does not know who the killer is.

In this painting, colors and textures blend into one another and create ghostly forms, the light
doesn’t allow your eyes to focus, so you can’t figure out what is going on. You know something
or someone is there, but you are denied knowing anything. Walter plays with the power of
curiosity, just like in a film when a protagonist ventures alone into a dark basement and opens a
door, knowing something evil is behind it.
This was one of the ideas I wanted to explore within my model. That feeling of wanting to know
what’s further down the space, even if you sense that something isn’t right.
The main idea for my space is actually more context focused.
Context
The idea for this painting actually came to the artist with the occurrence of Sickert renting a
room in London (Mornington Crescent 6, Somers Town) and being told by his landlady that,
according to her, Jack the Ripper may have once lived in the room he’d rented.

This only increased suspicions for people that Walter could have been the killer.
Despite biographers pointing out Walter’s absence from England at the time of The Ripper’s
murders, there have been theories both in the fictional and non-fiction that Walter Sickert was in
fact Jack the Ripper.

EXPLAINING THE SPACE

First I made abstract sketches of the space I’d tried to visualize based on the painting. I did it in charcoal,
trying to keep in mind what Peter zumthor said in his book Atmospheres, about approaching a space
design by imagining a space of shadows and then carving out areas of light from that shadow block.

-Explain sketches–
1. Too literal
2. Haphazardness and uncertainty
3. Evokes a feeling of curiosity

Then with the 2nd sketch I realized that while things may seemingly be random, they’re actually not.
Going back to the whole context of the painting being derived from the whitechapel murders, I realized
that serial killers and painters both have one thing in common - a plan. Walter knew what colors he was
using, what brushstrokes and what effect of light and shadow he wanted to give his painting the effect it
has. Similarly, the Ripper would only select certain types of people as his victims (mostly prostitutes).
And so I realized that since Walter had taken his inspiration for the painting from the Whitechapel
murder’s I’d take mine from there too.

So I printed out a map of whitechapel during the 1800s when the ripper was out killing, and drew out a
route based on the locations of his murders from the first to last. (ofc there were more but only 5
confirmed murders by HIM) Based on this route I derived my space
-Explain the map–
-Explain the carved out part–

So the space gets larger to smaller due to that effect that I'd been exploring in this sketch based on
Walter’s painting. It was the idea of not really knowing what’s next, yet following along a given path. The
walls start off tall but get smaller and the path the viewer takes becomes narrower which would further
trigger a sense of fear and caution. Moreover, the color choice is based off of the palette from the
painting, and because they’re so dark they absorb light and will keep absorbing more light the deeper you
go.
I combined this with the idea of how the space was designed, so a viewer of the painting would enter the
gallery through the entrance here which is “the first murder spot” and they would walk through all of the
spots until they reached the final victim spot. That’s where the painting would be. A vertical canvas hung
at the end where the viewer has a face to face experience.

Now the painting is a vertical canvas defined by strong vertical geometries: door frames, the armoire, the
tall window, and, of course, the mysterious man standing in the center. Moreover, the perspective is
elevated with respect to the threshold which implies that we are standing face to face with this man, as if
he was waiting for us…almost as if he knew we were coming…

Keeping in mind the context of the painting, the rumors about the painter, the design of the space (color,
walls, light effect) it would evoke a sense of fear and dread in the viewer, and they would want to leave as
soon as possible. Since the painting is hung at a dead end, their only way to return would be to go back
the same way, before their imagination gets the better of them.

Random research
● It is evident here that Sickert exploits color and light to reflect an admiration of the
Ripper’s confidence as well as a judgment on his nefarious personality which again
make him a likely guilty candidate.
● Sickert's paintings of the Camden Town Murder series were painted in a narrow tonal
range, as were numerous other obese nudes in the pre-World War I period in which the
fleshiness of the figures is connected to the thickness of the paint
● Sickert began creating more work that portrayed the seedy, unglamorous nature of
everyday life in the dark corners of London.
● He was an eccentric man and his work was often mysterious and ghoulish. At the time,
his personality and eerie paintings simply defined the cutting-edge artist he was
● When he moved to Camden Town in the early 1900s, he painted Jack the Ripper’s
Bedroom after his landlady told him that the Ripper was the previous tenant of the room
he was staying in.
● In September 1907, while Sickert was still living there, Emily Dimmock’s mutilated body
was found in her bed in Camden. Her murder became known as the Camden Town
Murder and Sickert created several paintings and drawings related to it.
● Books about sickert as the ripper: Sickert and the Ripper Crimes. Portrait of a Killer -
patricia cornwell
Cornwell's suspicions were sharpened by a series of pictures (the camden town murders)
prompted by the murder of a Camden prostitute, which Cornwell claims have an eerie similarity
to the autopsy pictures taken of the Ripper's victims.

"This painter never painted anything he had not seen. This man was a very smart man. If you
have these murders going on then you started painting pictures of disembowelled women on the
streets, somebody is going to say, 'Let's go take a look at this guy.'"
In one painting of a woman with a pearl necklace, Cornwell said the pose was identical to that of
Kelly's when she was found by police, the only one of the women to be murdered in her bed.
Another showed a woman's face mutilated by paint in a way similar to Eddowes's wounds.

About sickert
Sickert was a narcissist and a sociopath. He could be attractive, entertaining and charismatic,
but his friends also knew him as cruel and exploitative. He was a baffling chameleon, changing
his hair or name whenever the mood struck.

There are accounts from friends that he would dress up as the monster, putting on a red
neckerchief and painting in the glow of a bullseye lantern.

By then he was considered an important and controversial artist who captured low-life Victorian
Britain through its shadowy music halls and flickering interiors.