chance for Sickert having seen MJK crime scene ?

[Limehouse]

In my opinion, Sickert didn't only "suck up the atmosphere" of the room, many years after, but "vampirised" the mere crime scene with the body in... His paintings included women modeling MJK's corpse, and even her slashed face...

In my opinion…
Regards
Gene

Examples please?

[RivkahChaya]

Could somebody tell me exactly what painting we are talking about? while the mutilations to MJK are shocking, the actual position of he body isn't. It's not a difficult position to assume, and it's comfortable. It's slightly masturbatory looking, but that doesn't make it unusual, other than the fact that women are usually in private in that position. But it isn't like the body is twisted, with the abdomen facing one way, and the head another, or the arms are hanging off the bed. I always thought it was especially macabre that aside from the hand being in the abdominal cavity, instead of resting on the stomach, and the feet being just a little farther apart than might be natural, it was a position you could find a living woman resting in.

Do many of this forum members really think that Walter Sickert has seen Mary Kelly bedroom after her death, and use it as a motive for later paintings ?

Regards

Sorry if I'm being really bone-headed, but when you say "motive," do you mean "motif"? Can you post a link to a specific picture?

[Limehouse]

Could somebody tell me exactly what painting we are talking about? while the mutilations to MJK are shocking, the actual position of he body isn't. It's not a difficult position to assume, and it's comfortable. It's slightly masturbatory looking, but that doesn't make it unusual, other than the fact that women are usually in private in that position. But it isn't like the body is twisted, with the abdomen facing one way, and the head another, or the arms are hanging off the bed. I always thought it was especially macabre that aside from the hand being in the abdominal cavity, instead of resting on the stomach, and the feet being just a little farther apart than might be natural, it was a position you could find a living woman resting in.
Sorry if I'm being really bone-headed, but when you say "motive," do you mean "motif"? Can you post a link to a specific picture?

I too, am wondering which painting(s) is/are being referred to RivkahChaya!

[Phil Carter]

I too, am wondering which painting(s) is/are being referred to RivkahChaya!

Hello Julie,

Well the only one that has certain known links to JTR is entitled "Jack the Ripper's bedroom".. and trying to actually see anything in that painting is nigh on impossible!

If, as I THINK is being hinted at here, we are going to get the series of paintings a la Stephen Knight book presented us with, then we can all go back to sleep again.

best wishes

Phil

[RivkahChaya]

Well the only one that has certain known links to JTR is entitled "Jack the Ripper's bedroom".. and trying to actually see anything in that painting is nigh on impossible!

Jack the Ripper's Bedroom doesn't show a woman lying down at all. I Googled Sickert. There are lots of pictures with women lying on their backs, some with their heads turned, some partly nude, some with men present in the picture. None looked dead, but one was lying on something that looked suspiciously like a bier. No coffin, just a bier. She was very much alive, but naked, and it creeped me out.

However, I didn't see anything that specifically suggested MJK. But like I said, what is distinctive about her is her mutilations, not her body position. I didn't see any pictures with the legs in that position, other than one where a man is sitting on the bed, obscuring the legs, and the head is turned the other way, and her arm is next to her body. Her breasts are exposed, and she is not obviously either alive or dead, but if she is alive, she is not alarmed. That one certainly could be an artist's interpretation of MJK's room just before the mutilations, with MJK dead or unconscious, and JTR sitting on the other side of the bed from the angle of the the police photo. I think it's from the Camden Town series, though, and the bed is iron. There's nothing so remarkably MJK about it that suggests it couldn't be entirely imaginative. On the other hand, there's also no similarity that couldn't be derived from a description of the crime scene, rather than a photo, or personal look.

There are several pictures where women lie on beds with their heads turned, looking disturbingly...unaware. They could be dead, or drugged. The pictures give me the creeps, and I wouldn't hang any of them in my living room, and I am someone who posts to a Jack the Ripper forum. Anyway, none of them look like MJK in any distinctive way. Their legs are not bent in the right way, and their hands are not on their abdomens.

That doesn't mean there isn't a picture out there, but I have seen pretty much every one that is on the internet somewhere, so if the picture exists, it's in a private collection some place, and has been for a long time.

As far as "motif"; "naked woman lying on bed, disturbingly submissive" is too general to suggest "inspired by MJK's crime scene," in my opinion.

[Phil Carter]

Jack the Ripper's Bedroom doesn't show a woman lying down at all. I Googled Sickert. There are lots of pictures with women lying on their backs, some with their heads turned, some partly nude, some with men present in the picture. None looked dead, but one was lying on something that looked suspiciously like a bier. No coffin, just a bier. She was very much alive, but naked, and it creeped me out.

However, I didn't see anything that specifically suggested MJK. But like I said, what is distinctive about her is her mutilations, not her body position. I didn't see any pictures with the legs in that position, other than one where a man is sitting on the bed, obscuring the legs, and the head is turned the other way, and her arm is next to her body. Her breasts are exposed, and she is not obviously either alive or dead, but if she is alive, she is not alarmed. That one certainly could be an artist's interpretation of MJK's room just before the mutilations, with MJK dead or unconscious, and JTR sitting on the other side of the bed from the angle of the the police photo. I think it's from the Camden Town series, though, and the bed is iron. There's nothing so remarkably MJK about it that suggests it couldn't be entirely imaginative. On the other hand, there's also no similarity that couldn't be derived from a description of the crime scene, rather than a photo, or personal look.

There are several pictures where women lie on beds with their heads turned, looking disturbingly...unaware. They could be dead, or drugged. The pictures give me the creeps, and I wouldn't hang any of them in my living room, and I am someone who posts to a Jack the Ripper forum. Anyway, none of them look like MJK in any distinctive way. Their legs are not bent in the right way, and their hands are not on their abdomens.

That doesn't mean there isn't a picture out there, but I have seen pretty much every one that is on the internet somewhere, so if the picture exists, it's in a private collection some place, and has been for a long time.

As far as "motif"; "naked woman lying on bed, disturbingly submissive" is too general to suggest "inspired by MJK's crime scene," in my opinion.

Hello Rivkah,

I didn't suggest that the painting "Jack the Ripper's bedroom" DID show a woman lying down... I only said that the ONLY known painting we can be certain that Sickert painted in connection with JTR, was "Jack the Ripper's bedroom".

best wishes

Phil

[RivkahChaya]

I didn't suggest that the painting "Jack the Ripper's bedroom" DID show a woman lying down... I only said that the ONLY known painting we can be certain that Sickert painted in connection with JTR, was "Jack the Ripper's bedroom".

Sorry. That was just info in case anyone wasn't familiar with the painting. I guess it did come across as though I was implying that you did suggest that. Didn't mean to.

[RivkahChaya]

Oh, while we are on it, does anyone know whether there is a connection between the subject of Jack the Ripper's Bedroom, and the person who suggested the novel The Lodger to Marie Belloc Lowndes? Supposedly, she was at a dinner party when one of the women near her confided that she thought she had rented a room to JTR.

Was that a common thing, like women saying they thought they may have gotten into a car with Ted Bundy? There are at least a couple of famous people with dubious stories, and I know that in the early 1990s, it wasn't hard to find someone willing to offer a personal account claiming it might have happened, but they weren't entirely sure-- but they were never getting into a car with a stranger again, not even a really old man, or a woman, etc., etc.

Did someone ever trace a specific landlady going around telling people she had rented to JTR? Yes, I realize that even tracking her down doesn't prove anything, because she could be mistaken or lying, but it is still interesting.

[Phil Carter]

Sorry. That was just info in case anyone wasn't familiar with the painting. I guess it did come across as though I was implying that you did suggest that. Didn't mean to.

Hello Rivkah,

No problem at all!!

best wishes

Phil

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

The Sickert painting that is usually suggested to be a representation of Mary Kelly's body in Miller's Court is "La Hollandaise," although almost any painting which shows a woman lying on a bed has been put forth as "evidence" that Sickert was the Ripper and had seen the body of Mary Kelly in situ.

In "La Hollandaise," a naked woman lies upright on a bed, she is apparently alive, but her face is fairly indiscernible as if badly mutilated. There is a slash of light coloured paint across her throat, where no light or highlight should appear, and there is a line of light paint on one leg at exactly the same spot on the leg (just below the knee) that the dark line of the flap of skin appears in the Kelly police photo. This is supposedly Sickert's artistic concept of the Kelly murder scene.

Wolf.

[lynn cates]

Ripperologists R Us

Hello Wolf. "La Hollandaise"? Sounds like a sauce. "Saucy Jacky"?

Case closed! (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[Limehouse]

The Sickert painting that is usually suggested to be a representation of Mary Kelly's body in Miller's Court is "La Hollandaise," although almost any painting which shows a woman lying on a bed has been put forth as "evidence" that Sickert was the Ripper and had seen the body of Mary Kelly in situ.

In "La Hollandaise," a naked woman lies upright on a bed, she is apparently alive, but her face is fairly indiscernible as if badly mutilated. There is a slash of light coloured paint across her throat, where no light or highlight should appear, and there is a line of light paint on one leg at exactly the same spot on the leg (just below the knee) that the dark line of the flap of skin appears in the Kelly police photo. This is supposedly Sickert's artistic concept of the Kelly murder scene.

Wolf.

Hi Wolf,

La Hollandaise? The Dutch Girl is supposed to be Mary Kelly?? Just because the face is obscured? Don't these people know ANYTHING about art??

Regards

Julie

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Hi Lynn.

Actually, the name may be interesting and, even, instructive. Exactly why Sickert titled the painting "La Hollandaise" is unclear but one Sickert expert has suggested that it comes from Balzac's work "Gobseck," in which one of the characters, a prostitute, is called "la belle Hollandaise." The painting, therefore, may be of a prostitute sitting on a bed with a mutilated face.

Wolf.

[Gene Lewis]

Examples please?

Hi Limehouse and everybody asking for more specific – as we say in french –"commencements de preuves":
- I meant not paintings like "JtR's bedroom" that could be seen as a coqueterie from someone like Sickert, but oils like this one, which is , always in my opinion, NOT a sketch of Mary Kelly, neither a "like-n°13" room or bed, but an atmosphere painting of a souvenir.
I also meant it could be not a real life souvenir, but something out a photographic (police pict MJK1/MJK2)...
Is it just an arty choice to erase face features of a model ?
I know this all are not "commencements de preuves", but sorts of clues leading to something we are all after: what happened that summer and autumn '88 ?
regards
Gene

[Gene Lewis]

Forgot the pict !