- 38
Edward Burra
Estimate
100,000 - 150,000 GBP
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Description
- Edward Burra
- Death and the Soldiers
- pencil and watercolour
- 100 by 67cm.; 39¼ by 26¼in.
- Executed in 1942-3.
Watercolour
Provenance
Leicester Galleries, London
Robert Banks, by 1952
Alex Reid & Lefevre, London, by 1985
Private Collection
Their sale, Sotheby's London, 3rd July 2002, lot 69, where acquired by the late owner
Robert Banks, by 1952
Alex Reid & Lefevre, London, by 1985
Private Collection
Their sale, Sotheby's London, 3rd July 2002, lot 69, where acquired by the late owner
Exhibited
London, Mayor Gallery, Modern British Paintings for Europe, 1947-8, cat. no.1;
London, Arts Council of Great Britain, Three Young Collectors, 26th November - 9th December 1952, cat. no.2;
London, Lefevre Gallery, A Memorial Exhibition of Works by Edward Burra 1905-1976, 19th May - 2nd July 1977, cat. no.9, illustrated;
London, Hayward Gallery, Edward Burra, 1st August - 29th September 1985, cat. no.99, illustrated, where lent by Alex Reid & Lefevre;
London, Olympia, Fine Art and Antiques Fair, Edward Burra, Loan Exhibition, 27th February - 4th March 2001, cat. no.5, illustrated.
London, Arts Council of Great Britain, Three Young Collectors, 26th November - 9th December 1952, cat. no.2;
London, Lefevre Gallery, A Memorial Exhibition of Works by Edward Burra 1905-1976, 19th May - 2nd July 1977, cat. no.9, illustrated;
London, Hayward Gallery, Edward Burra, 1st August - 29th September 1985, cat. no.99, illustrated, where lent by Alex Reid & Lefevre;
London, Olympia, Fine Art and Antiques Fair, Edward Burra, Loan Exhibition, 27th February - 4th March 2001, cat. no.5, illustrated.
Literature
William Chappell (ed.), Edward Burra, A Painter Remembered by His Friends, Andre Deutsch, in association with the Lefevre Gallery, London, 1982, p.105, illustrated (dated 1940);
Andrew Causey, Edward Burra, Complete Catalogue, Phaidon, Oxford, 1985, cat. no.159, illustrated fig.17;
Burlington Magazine, February 2001, illustrated.
Andrew Causey, Edward Burra, Complete Catalogue, Phaidon, Oxford, 1985, cat. no.159, illustrated fig.17;
Burlington Magazine, February 2001, illustrated.
Condition
The following condition report has been kindly prepared by Jane McAusland FIIC, Conservator and Restorer of Art on Paper, Nether Hall Barn, Old Newton, Nr. Stowmarket, Suffolk, IP14 4PP.
Support
This watercolour is on a large sheet of wove-type paper. It is laid down and at present over-mounted at the edges, so these could not be fully viewed but the condition appears to be very good.
Medium
In my opinion the medium's gentle tones are in a very good condition and I would not say there was fading to these pigments.
Note: This work was viewed outside studio conditions.
Housed behind glass in a gilt wood frame.
Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."
Catalogue Note
Executed in 1942-43, Death and the Soldiers was painted in Burra’s home town of Rye, on the Sussex coast. One of the most distinctive of his remarkable series of pictures painted during the Second World War, Death and the Soldiers combines the monumental universality of his best Spanish Civil War works with a new element. With their backdrop of crumbling renaissance ruins, the Spanish pictures allowed scope for the theatrical; the Rye pictures bring into sharper focus the reality of domestic war as experienced daily by soldiers and civilians alike.
In 1936 Edward Burra returned to Rye from Spain deeply disturbed by what he had seen of the stupidity and escalating horror of world events. As Franco was installed by coup d’etat, he began work on his first war paintings, culminating in the great War in the Sun (sold in these rooms, 13th May 1992, lot 49). Burra never chose a side: loving Spain, he saw in the war only the death of the country that he had known. Partisanship was irrelevant for him, and the victims and aggressors of the Civil War series are unidentified and universal, and like the protagonists in his hero Goya’s series, The Disasters of War, hopelessly entwined devouring each other. It is this sense of human evil and its ability to manifest itself in the corporeal world as a tangible force that links his Spanish and English images of war.
In Death and the Soldiers, Burra presents one of his most powerful and quelling characters. Set against a flat and steeply rising plane, Death appears as though propelled outwards and upwards from within the land itself, the shadows at its feet suggestive of a dark hole from which the apparition has come. With a baleful eye and furrowed brow, the figure remains of uncertain form, the gestures of the hands unclear as to whether they are either beckoning or repelling. In a strong link to the Spanish pictures, Burra gives Death the monopoly of all colour in the work, blood-red rather than black: the surrounding scene is swathed in tones of sun-bleached and dusty military-issue khaki.
Having painted the Spanish pictures largely from memory, relying on powerful impressions sustained on the spot, Burra turned in the early 1940s to his immediate surroundings. With the Rye paintings Burra’s war observations became ‘real’ for the first time. Uniformed soldiers are located in Rye with the levels of the cinque ports marsh region spreading flat from the high horizon line. Yet nature here is crowded out by the paraphernalia of war. The landscape is dominated by the presence of an aggressively positioned howitzer. Sheets of corrugated iron enclose pre-fab huts. Service vehicles nose amongst amorphous tents and tarpaulins, while a cooking cauldron and unmarked boxes are abandoned to one side, and a broken picket fence appears to mimic a crucifix. The seven men in khaki wear contemporary dress – regulation berets on their heads and their ballooning fatigues obediently secured at the ankles with puttees.
After years of extensive travel throughout the 1930s, Burra’s experience of the tension and virtual imprisonment on the home front left him exhausted and physically unwell – he wrote to Billy Chappell on 18 August 1945, ‘I’ve given up dearie & never go out and can scarcely speak I dread going to London ...’ (William Chappell (ed.), Well Dearie! The Letters of Edward Burra, Gordon Fraser, London, 1985, p.127). However, despite the set-backs of war and his feelings about the pointlessness and mindless brutality of battle, the strength of Burra’s spirit is manifested through his fierce loyalty to his close friends. He wrote to them voraciously throughout the war, keeping them up to date with news and generously sharing the produce of the Springfield kitchen gardens in highly rationed circumstances; he wrote to Bumble in 1941, ’Dearest Bum, I sent 5 onions sewn up like an operation so may busy fingers that steal them rot away…’ (ibid., p.114).
In 1936 Edward Burra returned to Rye from Spain deeply disturbed by what he had seen of the stupidity and escalating horror of world events. As Franco was installed by coup d’etat, he began work on his first war paintings, culminating in the great War in the Sun (sold in these rooms, 13th May 1992, lot 49). Burra never chose a side: loving Spain, he saw in the war only the death of the country that he had known. Partisanship was irrelevant for him, and the victims and aggressors of the Civil War series are unidentified and universal, and like the protagonists in his hero Goya’s series, The Disasters of War, hopelessly entwined devouring each other. It is this sense of human evil and its ability to manifest itself in the corporeal world as a tangible force that links his Spanish and English images of war.
In Death and the Soldiers, Burra presents one of his most powerful and quelling characters. Set against a flat and steeply rising plane, Death appears as though propelled outwards and upwards from within the land itself, the shadows at its feet suggestive of a dark hole from which the apparition has come. With a baleful eye and furrowed brow, the figure remains of uncertain form, the gestures of the hands unclear as to whether they are either beckoning or repelling. In a strong link to the Spanish pictures, Burra gives Death the monopoly of all colour in the work, blood-red rather than black: the surrounding scene is swathed in tones of sun-bleached and dusty military-issue khaki.
Having painted the Spanish pictures largely from memory, relying on powerful impressions sustained on the spot, Burra turned in the early 1940s to his immediate surroundings. With the Rye paintings Burra’s war observations became ‘real’ for the first time. Uniformed soldiers are located in Rye with the levels of the cinque ports marsh region spreading flat from the high horizon line. Yet nature here is crowded out by the paraphernalia of war. The landscape is dominated by the presence of an aggressively positioned howitzer. Sheets of corrugated iron enclose pre-fab huts. Service vehicles nose amongst amorphous tents and tarpaulins, while a cooking cauldron and unmarked boxes are abandoned to one side, and a broken picket fence appears to mimic a crucifix. The seven men in khaki wear contemporary dress – regulation berets on their heads and their ballooning fatigues obediently secured at the ankles with puttees.
After years of extensive travel throughout the 1930s, Burra’s experience of the tension and virtual imprisonment on the home front left him exhausted and physically unwell – he wrote to Billy Chappell on 18 August 1945, ‘I’ve given up dearie & never go out and can scarcely speak I dread going to London ...’ (William Chappell (ed.), Well Dearie! The Letters of Edward Burra, Gordon Fraser, London, 1985, p.127). However, despite the set-backs of war and his feelings about the pointlessness and mindless brutality of battle, the strength of Burra’s spirit is manifested through his fierce loyalty to his close friends. He wrote to them voraciously throughout the war, keeping them up to date with news and generously sharing the produce of the Springfield kitchen gardens in highly rationed circumstances; he wrote to Bumble in 1941, ’Dearest Bum, I sent 5 onions sewn up like an operation so may busy fingers that steal them rot away…’ (ibid., p.114).