Walter Richard Sickert was born on May 31, 1860, in Munich, Germany, to Danish-born Oswald Adalbert Sickert and his English-Irish wife Eleanor Louisa Moravia Henry. Walter was the third generation of artists in the family. His father worked as a painter and graphic artist for a German humor magazine; his grandfather, Johann Jürgen Sickert, was so gifted a painter that he earned the patronage of Denmark's King Christian VIII.

In 1868, the Sickerts moved to England, where Walter attended a series of schools. A decade later he made first-class honors on his London Matriculation exam, but he did not attend a university. Instead, he pursued his love of acting-an avocation he continued to practice through his early twenties when he would act and tour as a member of Henry Irving's company (including a stint as the ghost in Irving's Hamlet at the Lyceum Theatre.) Sickert would later claim that what he knew of art theory he learned from his father, who used to take him to the Royal Academy at Burlington House to study the paintings of the "Old Masters." In the early 1880s, he also studied at London's prestigious Slade School of Fine Art.

By the time of the first Ripper murders, Sickert was twenty-eight years old and had given up his obscure acting career for the higher calling of art. He was a painter, an etcher, a student of James McNeill Whistler, and a disciple of Edgar Degas. He would often spend his summers painting and drawing among fellow artists and prominent friends in Dieppe, France where he kept several places.

Sickert's precise height is unknown, but photographs and several items of clothing donated to the Tate Gallery Archive in the 1980s suggest he was probably five foot eight or nine. Slender, with a strong upper body from swimming, a perfectly angled nose and jaw, thick wavy blond hair, and blue eyes, Sickert was fluent in German, English, French, and Italian. He knew Latin well enough to teach it to friends, and he was well acquainted with Danish and Greek and possibly knew a smattering of Spanish and Portuguese. He was said to read the classics in their original languages, but he didn't always finish a book once he started it. It wasn't uncommon to find dozens of novels strewn about, opened to the last page that had snagged his interest. Mostly, Sickert was addicted to newspapers, tabloids, and journals. He was also a prodigious writer who published some four hundred lectures and articles-most of them written between 1911 and the late 1930s.

Sickert, who died in 1942 at the age of 81, is considered one of Great Britain's leading painters. His paintings and sketches can be seen at museums and galleries throughout the United Kingdom, as well as in Rouen, Dieppe, Melbourne, and New York.

• Portrait of a Killer
• Chronology of Events
• Evidence as Detailed in the Book
• Chapter One

Food to Die For | Life's Little Fable