Edward Burra 1905-1976

Florence Rushbury, London, acquired direct from the Artist, 1924, and thence by family descent

This previously unpublished work was painted for Florence Rushbury, who had been a mature student with Burra at Chelsea and was married to the artist Henry Rushbury. The subject is derived from the crowds of Cockney and gypsy families who descended to work in the hop gardens of Kent over the border from Rye at harvest time. Living in the open for the season they were for Burra infinitely more attractive than the staid inhabitants of ‘Tinkerbell Town’ or indeed the students at Chelsea, as graphically described by Billy Chappell:
   "The arcane rituals of the ‘Tea Club’ took place during the mid-morning and afternoon breaks when a privileged elite of a dozen to fifteen senior students and pupil teachers endured maximum discomfort by squeezing themselves into a completely windowless, airless cupboard in one of the school’s corridors. Biscuits and buns were handed round, and tea was brewed on a gas ring from which fumes added flavour to the claustrophobic and exclusive atmosphere. Chappell and Burra were introduced (producing a dead silence) into this hallowed precinct by a small, soft-voiced bosomy person, Florence ‘Birdie’ Rushbury whose sharp tongue and married status (her husband being an R.A.) gave her undisputed authority to do as she wished" (see Well Dearie! The Letters of Edward Burra, ed. William Chappell, Gordon Fraser, London, 1985, p.15).

According to Florence the hop-pickers seen here bore a marked and deliberate resemblance to herself, as well as a number of other London friends and contemporaries. Certainly it would have been typical of Burra to fuse images of London figures and gypsy revelry. It is at this date that his fascination with mixing influence and reference begins to result in pictures that are rarely true records of individual places or people but rather fantastic composites. In addition the work anticipates the jewelled colours and confident complexity of the drawings from his first trip to Paris in 1925 (under the watchful eye of Florence) and is imbued with the same sense of freedom. It signals the start of the period through the 20s and 30s in which travel was at the core of Burra’s art and can be placed therefore at the moment at which his distinctive vision first emerges.