LONDON -- Walter Sickert (1860-1942) has a good claim to being
the father of modern British art. A student of Whistler, he was
a friend of Degas, knew Manet, and through his own work
transmitted Impressionism and Post-Impressionism to a younger
generation. Indeed, a case can be made that there's a direct
line linking Sickert with Francis Bacon. The Dulwich Picture
Gallery's exhibition "Sickert in Venice" shows how and where
Sickert found his identity as an artist, in the repeated visits
the painter made to the city beginning in 1895. The
illustrations and cover in the exhibition's catalog are somehow
bright and colorful. Yet the pictures themselves are, for the
most part, somber and dark. The exception is the 1901 painting,
"Santa Maria della Salute," in which the red squared-up lines on
the panel show through the oil paint, conferring a geometrical
discipline upon the freely rendered image. Similarly, in "The
Ghetto, Venice" (1897-98), the repeated rectangular shapes of
the six- and seven-story buildings giv