Edward Burra

Kuhn, Loeb & Co. International
Sale, Sotheby's London, 15^th May 1985, lot 183, where acquired by the Crane Kalman Gallery, London on behalf of the present owners

London, Tate Gallery, Edward Burra, 1973, cat. no.53, illustrated in the catalogue.

Andrew Causey, Edward Burra: Complete Catalogue, Phaidon, Oxford 1985, cat. no.124, illustrated.

The following condition report has been compiled by the paper conservator and restorer, Jane McAusland: Support Burra has joined six sheets of a wove paper which are uneven in size. This construction is not laid down, and is in a good condition. Medium The medium is fresh, bright and unfaded and also in a good condition. Note: This work was viewed behind glass and outside studio conditions.
"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."

Having first visited the bustling ports of Marseilles and Toulon in 1927, Burra had become fascinated by the hive of activity to be found in harbour towns. The exotic mix of characters from all different parts of the globe that converged on the busy ports provided him with an endless repository of characters and details that he readily absorbed into his unique visual vocabulary. Works such as Dockside Café, Marseilles (1929, Private Collection) and Sailors at a bar (1930, Private Collection) exemplify his extraordinary ability to capture the acute characteristics of the heady bohemian underworld of these seaside cities.

The present work, however, is quite different and focuses on a harbour itself rather than the eclectic passing crowds. In the year the present work was painted, 1936, Burra had been in Spain with Clover Pritchard and her husband Antonio Pertinez when the Spanish Civil war broke out. According to Jane Stevenson, the Burra family had always maintained that Burra had been evacuated from Spain on a British Navy ship and it is highly possible that the present work was based on his experience of sailing back to England. Indeed, the single boat in the centre of the composition with its lone boatman strikes a somewhat reflective tone within this context. Moreover, in contrast to the frantic nature of his earlier French-inspired images with their eclectic cast of different characters, the quaysides in the present work are almost devoid of human presence embuing the picture with an eerie silence that is perhaps ominous of the war to come and its impact on the harbours and ports along the English coast.

As is typical of the artist's idiosynchratic style, the panoramic sweep of the composition appears at first to capture the everyday details of a very British harbour, however, on closer inspection, Burra fuses the scene with his own quirky observations. The ribcage-like structure of the boat on the left of the composition takes on an anthropomorphic quality and signals Burra's surrealist sensibilites; the pattern of struts ossilates between the recognisable forms of an old boat and the toothy grin of one of his cabaret performing friends. Furthermore, in contrast to the concise and stylised architecture of the harbour buildings, the loose, swirling handling of the sky creates an almost hallucinatory effect recalling Burra's most fantastical images from the decade such as John Deth (1932, Private Collection) and Dancing Skeletons (1934, Tate Collection, London). Shortly after he painted the present work, Burra became completely occupied with images relating to the Spanish Civil War and did not to return to the landscape genre until the late 1940s.