Edward Burra

Alex Reid and Lefevre Ltd, London
Private Collection, U.S.A.

British Council touring exhibition, British Painting, no.5, details untraced;
Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, British Art and the Modern Movement 1930-40, October-November 1962;
Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Body and Soul, 23 October 1975-4 January 1976, no.69;
London, Royal Academy, Art Council, Cityscape 1910-1939: Urban Themes in American, German and British Art, 1977;
London, Lefevre Gallery, A Memorial Exhibition of Edward Burra 1905-1976, May-July 1977, no.5, illustrated.
London, Hayward Gallery, Arts Council, Thirties, October 1979-January 1980, no.6.33, illustrated p.44;
London, Hayward Gallery, Edward Burra, 1985, illustrated;

Andrew Causey, Edward Burra: The Complete Catalogue, Oxford, 1985, no.112, col. pl.7, illustrated.

The work is on wove paper which has not been laid down. The sheet undulates slightly across the surface. The edges of the sheet are uneven in the lower right quadrant. The paper manufacturer's stamp on the verso can be seen through the sheet in the upper left quadrant. There is a tear, approximately 1in. in length, along the edge of the sheet in the upper right quadrant. There are some minor creases along the left edge of the sheet and some very minor losses to paint in several areas. The paint surface is in good overall condition. There is no sign of retouching under ultra-violet light. Held behind glass in a gold painted frame. Jane McAusland the paper conservator and restorer has also inspected the present work.
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Burra first visited America in October 1933, travelling to New York with the painter Sophie Fedorovitch and the photographer Olivia Wyndham. He lodged in Harlem with the actress Edna Thomas, a friend of Barbara Ker-Seymer, at 1890 7th Avenue until December, then stayed with Conrad Aitkin and his wife in Boston for Christmas, returning to New York and staying at 125 E15th St until March 1934. 

The trip was to be of enormous importance for his work, exposing him as it did to not only the huge cultural diversity of New York, and particularly Harlem, but also to the kind of American painting which was then little known in Europe. Burra's letters from New York tell us little about the exhibitions he may have been visiting (although we do know he visited the Picasso exhibition at the Wadsworth Athenaeum), mostly being about the bars and shows he was frequenting, but during his visit, MOMA was showing the paintings of Edward Hopper and the Whitney Museum was showing images of 'Twentieth Century New York in Paintings and Prints' and the possibilities of the combination of these rigorously urban images with Burra's own particular tastes for the life of the street can hardly be accidental when one looks at the paintings he produced. Many of these paintings take their subjects from the bars and music halls of the city in all its forms and the stronger the elements of burlesque, the more they seem to have appealed.

Although a number of the Harlem paintings do take specific locations as their subject, in Striptease Burra seems to be creating an image that is more about the experience of the type of places he was visiting, and this excitement is clear from his letters to friends. Writing to his great friend Barbara Ker-Seymer in 1933, Burra's characteristically breathless and unpunctuated style conveys the novelty of such places : 'We went to the Savoy dance hall the other night my dear you would go mad ive never in my life seen such a display...' (Willia Chappell (ed.), Well Dearie! The Letters of Edward Burra, Gordon Fraser Gallery, London, 1985, p.83). Whilst the Apollo sign over the stage obviously suggests the Harlem Apollo, and elements such as the bar behind the seating are similar to that theatre, it appears that Burra is more concerned with using the image to bring an amazingly wide cast of characters into the image. Clothes, hairstyles and mannerisms were always features that Burra noted closely, and here the audience offers a wonderful range of studies, with the sense that the stripper on the stage is actually not the prime focus of the audience. Again in a letter to Ker-Seymer, Burra refers to an 'Apollo burlesk featuring 'Paris in Harlem' which I am plotting to go to but won't be allowed to I can see..' and Causey speculates that this may be the source for the unconventional image for the period of a white stripper in a predominantly black venue.

The viewpoint over the heads of the spectators was one that had begun to appear in the works related to his Spanish trip earlier in 1933, and allows Burra to offer the viewer a feeling of involvement. In this, these paintings can be seen to echo an earlier strand of British art, perhaps drawing on the example of the music hall paintings of Sickert and Spencer Gore. However, despite the apparent informality of the crowd, Burra has carefully used a number of devices to ensure that the viewer's eye weaves through the crowd just as surely as if one was returning to one's seat.