In 1885 Walter Sickert met the French painter Jacques-Émile Blanche, whose patronage and social influence contributed to his early successes. Rendered in a pointillist manner, Blanche’s facial features contrast with the depiction of the smooth, dark fabric of his overcoat. The back of a stretched canvas is visible leaning against a wall in the background, which, together with his slightly tipped hat, evokes a bohemian unconventionality. ...Sickert and Blanche became close friends at this time, and the art historian Wendy Baron has written: The significance of the role played by Jacques-Émile Blanche in Sickert’s life can hardly be stressed too strongly. Sickert himself treated Blanche rather casually in later life. Their friendship cooled towards the end of the first decade of the twentieth century when Sickert gradually dismissed Blanche as a fussy, rather gloomy and lightweight personality. This change of attitude was typical ... and did not do justice to Blanche’s gifts nor to the help he had given Sickert in his early years.4 In 1909 Sickert wrote to Mrs Hammersley, the wife of one of his patrons, making plain his feelings about Blanche: You may not, probably do not know that in a sense I have treated Blanche who is a very old friend very badly ... The peculiar angle of his somewhat gossipy mind, and ... pushing character of his art politics, which happen to be diametrically opposed to mine decided me that it was absolutely necessary for my peace & comfort to avoid him & his friends as much as I could. He is a little too officious, kindly officious, but too inconvenient & too compromising. Fortunately the reality of my incessant occupation has enabled me to avoid many people I used constantly to see, without apparent unkindness ... I have even written displeasing things about Blanche’s work in my articles.5 But Blanche appears to have been central to Sickert’s early success. (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/walter-richard-sickert-jacques-mile-blanche-r1139023) Interestingly, Blanche lived almost in the same time as Sickert – he was born in 1861, just a year earlier than Sickert, and he died in the same 1942; but, oh dear, how different had been their lives, and their “trajectories”, too! By the way, the portrait of Blanche by Sickert is less known than the other portrait , painted by his friend and a mentor, John Sargent... (https://artmirrorsart.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/1231/)