Sickert vs. Sargent brings to life two of the biggest characters in modern British art; Walter Sickert - the gruff, aggressive man-of-the-people; and John Singer Sargent - the urbane and charming dandy. The film focuses on some of the most beautiful and alarming paintings ever made in this country; pictures of aristocrats and prostitutes, coronations and killings, opera houses and music halls, and will evoke the long-lost atmosphere of Edwardian London. But above all it will show that from their two outposts in Chelsea and Camden, Sickert and Sargent were waging a war whose legacy still haunts us today. These two larger-than-life immigrants were battling for nothing less than the future soul of British art. Surveying the big names of recent British art Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Paula Rego, Jenny Saville, Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon and their thick paint, ugly aesthetic and proletarian fleshiness, it is clear that it was the master of the kitchen who was victorious. A Film by Waldemar Januszczak.