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“What interests me about the Sickert essay is the ongoing conversation Woolf is having about the painters in her life, and her thinking about how a life-story can be told through words as opposed to through shapes and colours. The essay is based on her having seen a particular exhibition of Sickert paintings in London in the early ’30s, and then having a conversation about them with her painter friends, including her sister Vanessa, her brother-in-law Clive Bell, and Duncan Grant. She is always somewhat rivalrous with the painters, and deeply interested in painting. She has a painter in To the Lighthouse, who is constantly wondering, ‘how can I hold the balance between these parts of my painting?’, just as Woolf is always saying, ‘how can I hold the balance between these parts of my novel?’” Read more...
Hermione Lee, Biographer
