Edward Burra

Gifted to Barbara Ker-Seymer by the Artist while at Chelsea Art School in 1926
Sale, Bonhams London, 29^th November 1995, lot 116, where acquired by the present owner

London, Hayward Gallery, Arts Council of Great Britain, Edward Burra, 1st August - 29th September 1985, cat. no.21.

Andrew Causey, Edward Burra: A Complete Catalogue, Phaidon, Oxford, 1985, cat. no.21, illustrated.

The following condition report has been prepared by Jane McAusland ACR FIIC, Conservator and Restorer of Art on Paper: Support This fine gouache drawing is on a sheet of wove paper which has some time ago, been laid down onto a thin card of fairly poor quality. The sheet is in a good condition apart from a small corner loss lower left and a slight stain visible lower right, at the edge. Medium Overall the medium shows slight fading in the more delicate pigments, but it is still fairly bright and agreeable. The medium shows slight surface flaking in the lower right corner where it may have become damp at some point. There are other scattered areas of slight surface loss due to the artist's using gum Arabic with the pigment used to emphasise the shadow and darker areas. There are vertical and horizontal re-touched lines of surface abrasions towards all edges. These may have been caused by the removal of an old mount at some point. Note: This work was viewed outside studio conditions Please telephone the department on 0207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

'I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of one or 2 demoiselles de haute monde? or as good as haute monde... the native population are too beautiful and wear such exotic garments speshly the men I saw some most exotic shirts with Kubismus decoration all over them...'
(Edward Burra, 1925, writing about Bordighera in a letter to William Chappell, quoted in W. Chappell, ed., Well Dearie! The Letters of Edward Burra, Gordon Fraser, London, 1985, p.16).

Crammed together in the urban tumult, the vast range of intriguing characters on display in French Scene immediately communicates Burra's ongoing fascination with French Bohemian culture of the mid 1920s.  The intensely packed colour and detail of French Scene is a rare manifestation of Burra's early style and reveals his acute attention to the idiosyncrasies of the passing crowds. The scene is an eclectic visual clash of cultures and personalities, an aspect of the urban sphere which Burra considered fascinating, and he spent hours in cafés and bars soaking up the atmosphere. Here, one sees an elegantly suited man trundling along in a tram car lit by modern gas lamps, the driver operating the controls as he carefully attempts to slowly navigate through the crowd, which includes two figures in traditional garb progressing leisurely on horseback. The scene is rife with Burra's unerring eye for style and detail, the man on the right casually dangling a cigarette from his lips as he balances his load, the women in the foreground flaunting their fashionable hats adorned with buckles, tassels and brooches, the woman in the centre prominently displaying her striped stockings and laced boots as she contemplates the hastily displayed wares.

Burra had a long affinity for France and its reputation of avant-garde sophistication, romance and seediness. He visited Paris for the first time in the autumn of 1925, with Billy Chappell, his friend from the Chelsea Polytechnic. Although he had been to Switzerland and the Italian Riviera with his mother on previous holidays, this was his first unaccompanied foreign travel, and the pair were eagerly lured into the intoxicating world of bars, theatres, music halls and cabarets. One of their first endeavours was to go and see the Revue Nègre starring Josephine Baker, an experience that profoundly affected Burra, fuelling his burgeoning interest in black music and culture, which culminated most prominently in his 1930s Harlem pictures. French Scene is a collage of many separate themes and observations; it is a celebration rather than an accurate chronicle. Andrew Causey remarks of these early works: 'Burra's concept of modern life was a Romantic one, a Whitmanesque brotherhood of races and types; and his approach was sensuous rather than intellectual, evoking the whole feel of the city street, not just its visual aspect.'(Edward Burra: A Complete Catalogue, p.14) Two years after the visit to Paris, Burra travelled to Toulon and Marseilles and these ports, with their low-life sailors' bars, petty crime and easy morals, were to be the inspiration for a large body of French works in 1927-31.

Even before Burra's first journey abroad he was looking outside England for subjects. He had a voracious appetite for popular magazines, films and photographs, which fuelled his imagination and desire for new experiences. Besides general impressions of Paris, many of the faces and characters of French Scene are taken from Burra's collection of photographs and postcards (although the old woman in the lower right is based upon the family's nanny).The disjointed fragments of advertising slogans and the numbers on the foreground figure's dress reflect both his interests in popular advertising culture as well as the collages of Picasso and Braque. Burra had a broad understanding of contemporary European art, and the tightly packed composition and upturned perspective all reflect the work of George Grosz. As Burra's friend Barbara Ker-Seymer recalled: 'we also loved the terrible brothel scenes. These drawings were very like the German films we went to, for instance 'Joyless Street' in which Greta Garbo was reduced to going to a brothel and becoming a prostitute.' (Barbara Ker-Seymer, quoted in M. Kay Flavell, George Gross: A Biography, New Haven and London, 1988, p.53).  Burra had also seen William Roberts' show at the Chenil Galleries in 1923, and the bending figure in the lower left corner is derived from Roberts' The Char (1923-24, Tate Gallery, London). More fundamentally, the picture echoes Roberts' complex and tightly packed compositions of the time and Mark Gertler's proliferation of still life detail. 

Burra was a uniquely intuitive and sensitive traveller, and many of his major works are rooted in his capacity for observation: the American poet Conrad Aiken cited him as 'the best painter of the American scene' and Paul Nash compared him to Hogarth. In this respect, French Scene is an early sign of the relish for real life and variety that was to make him such a powerful and sensitive chronicler of the low-life of Marseilles, 1930s New York  and Civil War Spain.