Edward Burra

Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd, London
Crane Kalman Gallery, London
Mr R. Sangster, September 1976
Private Collection, London

Andrew Causey, Edward Burra, Complete Catalogue, Phaidon, Oxford, 1985, cat. no.267, illustrated.

The sheet is fully laid down to a backing card, with a slightly deckled lower right hand edge, not visible in the present frame. There are a couple of very minor spots of studio detritus visible to the left hand side of the sheet, only noticeable upon extremely close inspection, but this excepting the work appears in excellent overall condition, with bright, vivid colours throughout. Housed behind glass in a gilt frame, set within a red linen-textured mount. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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‘His torturers, his bullies, his soldiers, some of his phantasmagoria are evil, but many of his creatures are simply louche and disreputable. He loved naughtiness. He enjoyed depravity and bathed it in a glamorous light. He was acquainted with imps as well as demons’ (George Melly, forward, in William Chappell (ed.), Edward Burra: A Painter Remembered by His Friends, Andre Deutsch in association with the Lefevre Gallery, London, 1982, p.11).

Drawn from Burra’s amazingly fertile imagination, when one looks at The Burning Torch one feels as though we are witnessing a dream, or have been submitted to some form of hallucinogenic agent. What is actually happening in the scene remains unclear- the demonic like central figure is the overriding presence, his teeth barred; his huge blood shot eyes glaring outwards. Other figural elements seem to propagate from his form, a creature’s legs bursting from his chest, his body divided, the slice of red suggesting we are peering into his viscera. Despite the pervading sense of darkness, Burra cannot help but also include the shapely physique of one of his adored dancers, muscular legs with feet en-pointe, emerging as an apparition from the smoke. The colours are intensely vivid, saturated and extreme- they diffuse into one another, the creature’s tail disappearing into the surrounding amorphous body, its footprints dribbling off the page. Painted between 1959 and 1961, the execution of The Burning Torch contrasts with Burra’s earlier works, which are painted tightly, with a matte finish and opaqueness, feeling similar in many ways to tempera. Here Burra uses the watercolour medium to an entirely different effect- he utilizes the swirling diffusion, the blurring of boundaries, to encourage the prevailing sense of the uncanny and strange. 

Burra had long been fascinated by the macabre and the bizarre, and these elements appear continually throughout his career, from the dancing skeletons of the 1930s, all the way through to the menacing presences we find in his English landscapes of the 1950s and 60s. As is often the case with Burra, he did not elaborate on his beliefs, but it is clear he was fascinated by the idea of spirits, in the imperceptible sense of the supernatural. He drew inspiration from gothic novels which he loved, and as Jane Stevenson points out in her biography on the artist, he owned several books which focused on the existence of the occult, witchcraft and magic. In the 1960s he was particularly drawn into horror films, writing to Simon Lawrence in 1967: ‘Have been going to nothing but Horror pictures! Mostly made by Hammer films in Technicolour with “real” sets & very gothic “Rasputin the mad monk” “The Reptile” 2 stories freely adapted from H.P. Lovecraft!  Frieda Jackson held forth in a very high class English accent from a four poster bed heavily (& happily) hung with thick crêpe & suddenly burst out with an axe & a completely discomposed face made of foam rubber and attacked the heroine’ (Edward Burra to Simon Lawrence, 17^th August 1966, re-printed in Simon Martin (et. al.), Edward Burra, Lund Humphries in association with Pallant House Gallery, Farnham, 2011, p.79-80). While these sources provided Burra with fertile grounds for inspiration, it is truly his unique vision and mix of darkness with the comic which produces such powerful and intriguing characters, such as those we see in The Burning Torch.