Lot 13
  • 13

Edward Burra

Estimate
600,000 - 800,000 GBP
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Description

  • Edward Burra
  • Striptease, Harlem
  • watercolour and gouache
  • 77 by 50cm.; 30½ by 19¾in.
  • Executed in 1934.

Provenance

Alex. Reid and Lefevre Ltd, London
Private Collection, U.S.A. 
Private European Collection
Their sale, Sotheby's London, 13 December 2007, lot 61
Private Collection, from whom acquired by the present owner

Exhibited

British Council touring exhibition, British Painting, cat. no.5 (details untraced);
Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, British Art and the Modern Movement 1930-40, 13th October - 25th November 1962 (details untraced);
Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Body and Soul, 23rd October 1975 - 4th January 1976, cat. no.69;
London, Lefevre Gallery, A Memorial Exhibition of Edward Burra 1905-1976, 19th May - 2nd July 1977, cat. no.5, illustrated.
London, Royal Academy, Art Council, Cityscape 1910-1939: Urban Themes in American, German and British Art, 19th January - 19th March 1978, cat. no.31, illustrated;
London, Hayward Gallery, Arts Council, Thirties: British Art and Design before the War, 25th October 1979 - 13th January 1980, cat. no.6.33, illustrated;
London, Hayward Gallery, Edward Burra, 1st August - 29th September, cat. no.70, illustrated;
Chichester, Pallant House Gallery, Edward Burra, 22nd October 2011 - 10th February 2012, un-numbered exhibition, illustrated, with tour to Djanogoly Art Gallery, University of Nottingham, Nottingham.

Literature

Andrew Causey, Edward Burra, The Complete Catalogue, Phaidon,Oxford, 1985, cat. no.112, illustrated pl.7;
Simon Martin et. al., Edward Burra, Lund Humphries in association with Pallant House Gallery, Farnham, 2011, pp.106, illustrated fig.98.

Condition

The following condition report has kindly been prepared by Jane McAusland ACR FIIC, Conservator and Restorer of Art on Paper. Support This gouache has been executed upon a sheet of strong, white, laid type paper. At present it is hinged into an overlay mount. The condition of the sheet is good, it has been cut from a larger sheet of handmade paper and shows the deckle edge on the top and the left edges. The right side has been cut slightly roughly and there is a 2cm unsupported tear on the top edge, towards the right. A few old tapes show on the verso. Medium The medium is very bright and unfaded. There is some typical, slight craquelure on some of the pigments, in places, and a tiny loss of pigment to the right eye of the stripper. There is a vertical scuff on the back of the seat in the foreground to the right of the glass and a small artist's mistake on the left edge of the man nearest the stage. The red curtains show a little scuffing in a glancing light. Apart from these small defects the condition is good. Note: This work was viewed outside studio conditions. Housed behind glass in a thick gilt frame, set within a painted slip mount. 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."

Catalogue Note

‘New York would drive you into a fit. Harlem is like Walham green gone crazy we do a little shopping on 116th St every morning there are about 10 Woolworths of all sorts also 40 cinemas & Apollo burlesk featuring Paris in Harlem which I am plotting to go to It must be seen to be believed... The East side is lovely too a tangle of firescapes washing and fruit like a Berwick Street that’s burst all bounds everything here is more so...’
(Edward Burra, letter to Barbara Ker Seymer, October 1933, in William Chappell, (ed.), Well dearie! The Letters of Edward Burra, Gordon Fraser, London, 1985, p.83-84.)

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 Aiken 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 (see fig.1, Harlem, 1934, Tate Collection, London). 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...' (William Chappell (ed.), Well Dearie! The Letters of Edward Burra, Gordon Fraser Gallery, London, 1985, p.84). 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. Stylistic elements and gestures were always elements that Burra observed 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.