In Walter Sickert: A Conversation, Woolf argues for a close connection between the visual arts and literature and for Sickert's pre-eminence among living painters. The essay takes us behind the scenes at a dinner party among liiterary friends who have recently attended a Sickert exhibition. The language employed is vivid and quite unlike conventional art criticism. One, on entering the show, became all eye. I flew from colour to colour, from red to blue, from yellow to green. Colours went spirally through my body lighting a flare as if a rocket fell through the night... Another argues that Sickert's skills as a portraitist make him a great biographer...When he paints a portrait I read a life Another argues that He is more of a novelist than a biographer... He likes to set his characters in motion, to see them in action. On one thing they all agree: Sickert is probably the best painter now living in England.