Edward Burra

Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, where acquired by Wilfrid A. Evill 28th November 1957 for £105.0.0, by whom bequeathed to Honor Frost in 1963

London, The Leicester Galleries, The Recent Work of Edward Burra, June 1949, cat. no.10;
London, Arthur Tooth & Sons, Critic's Choice: Neville Wallis, 10th September - 5th October 1957, cat. no.9;
Paris, Contemporary British Art, October 1957, details untraced (probably);
London, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Pictures, Drawings, Water Colours and Sculpture, April - May 1961, (part II- section 2) cat. no.11;
Brighton, Brighton Art Gallery, The Wilfrid Evill Memorial Exhibition, June - August 1965, cat.  no.16.

Andrew Causey, Edward Burra Complete Catalogue, Phaidon Press, Oxford, 1985, cat. no.188;
Jane Stevenson, Edward Burra: Twentieth Century Eye, Jonathan Cape, London, 2007, p.348.

The following condition report has been compiled by Jane McAusland FIIC, Conservator and Restorer of Art on Paper: Support Burra has used a sheet of thick, hand-made paper to support this drawing. A deckled edge shows at the foot and the other edges have been slightly trimmed. At present, it is fully laid down onto a good quality board. The right edge is slightly cut. Otherwise the condition is good. Medium The medium appears to be in a very good condition. Note: This work was viewed outside studio conditions. For enquiries about the present work please contact the department on +44 (0)20 7293 6424.
"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."

The following work has been requested by Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, to be included in their forthcoming exhibition, Edward Burra, 22nd October 2011 to 19th February 2012, and will be included in the new monograph by Simon Martin to be published by Lund Humphries.

A riotous celebration of urban energy and style, Zoot Suits focuses on a group of swaggering young men flaunting the distinctive high-waisted, pegged trousers and wide lapelled coats that were first worn during Harlem's jazz scene in the 1930s. The zoot suit quickly became the bold uniform of choice particularly amongst Afro American, Mexican American, Caribbean and West Indian men eager to portray themselves at the cutting edge of music and fashion. With an unerring eye for style and detail, Burra would have been thrilled to chance upon a group of such sharply attired men in his favourite part of London, the insalubriously animated streets of Soho.

The London setting is highly significant as it was in the same year as the present work, 1948, that the SS. Empire Windrush docked in Britain from Jamaica, bringing a post-war generation of men and women from the Caribbean to the U.K. and heralding a new era in British cultural history. In celebrating the recent arrivals, Zoot Suits undoubtedly recalls Burra's excitement on first visiting New York in 1933 when he was particularly drawn to the energy of the Harlem Renaissance and subsequently produced some of his most memorable work such as Harlem (1934, watercolour, Tate Collection, London, fig.2). He wrote excitedly to Barbara Ker-Seymer, 'New York would drive you into a fit...[it] is like a Berwick Street thats burst all bounds everything here is more so...' (Burra to B.Ker-Seymer, October 1933, in William Chappell, ed., Well dearie! The Letters of Edward Burra, Gordon Fraser, London, 1985, pp. 83 and 94); in Zoot Suits, it was Berwick Street itself and its environs that had 'burst all bounds' and he was finally able to locate exemplars of the New World jazz culture which he so adored within the Old World of his own capital city.

Rife with style, Zoot Suits is also a testament to Burra's shrewd observational skills and his acute visual memory. Whilst the so-called zooters undoubtedly take centre stage, the characters in the background are no less rich demonstrating the artist's dynamic combination of actual and imagined realities so that skeletons stand cheek by jowl with friends, lovers, gangsters, prostitutes, old and young, each oblivious to the other as they scurry about on their everyday business.

We are grateful to Professor Jane Stevenson for her kind assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.