Burra

 'Standing next to a small youth at the entrance scholarship examination at the Royal College of Art in London, Eric Ravilious could not help noticing that he had made no attempt to draw the life model on the unaccustomedly large page. Burra spent the day painting just one eye, in the middle of the paper, in meticulous detail.' (Christopher Neve Unquiet Landscape ).
The small youth was Edward Burra, and his working methods were to remain eccentric throughout his working life. He preferred to work with paper laid flat on a table, often joining several pieces together, and would invariably begin drawing in the bottom right hand corner and work his way towards the complete composition from there. Sickly as well as small, he hovered on the edges of life, haunting low dives and painting his favourite subjects – 'waiters, seedy decor, nightclubs, cheap suits', also prostitutes and spivs. 'A lifelong exhaustion made him prey on other people's fun, especially (what he really savoured) bad behaviour, unkind laughter, mendacity, waspishness, all-out malicious enjoyment and any kind of excess'. 
The Snack Bar, which hangs in the Tate, is representative of his style...

But then there are the landscapes, which he painted for the last 15 years of his life, and which are, in Neve's judgment, 'odder and more potent than anything else he did'. From what I've seen of them online and in books – and Neve stresses that they really have to be seen in the original – I'm inclined to agree. They are typically very large watercolours with a kind of 'dreamlike clarity of surface', and they were painted from memory, often months after seeing the scene depicted. They often have a menacing air, enhanced by 'roller-coaster perspective' and 'punishing' colour. 'It is as though,' writes Neve, 'Cotman were reborn specifically to see England in its worst light'. And yet, they can be beautiful. I think this late watercolour of Windermere – a fine demonstration of that roller-coaster perspective – is a glorious piece of work, and I would love to see the original, but I believe it is in a private collection...

I spotted Burra's Windermere on a picture-sharing site, which sent me back to Neve – and now I feel I know and understand this strange painter far better than I ever did before. 

An Arty Jaunt

 I'm back from a two-day, two-gallery London jaunt, taking in two lunches, visits to Tate Britain and the National Gallery and, between them, an overnight stay with an old friend. At Tate Britain (still 'the Tate' to me) there are two concurrent exhibitions: one devoted to Edward Burra, which I was keen to see, and one to Ithell Colquhoun, which my friend wanted to see. I dutifully trailed around the latter, finding little to enjoy in the works of an artist who pursued every modish dead end available – notably surrealism and occultism – with results that are rarely very interesting or attractive. She seem to have had some talent for composition and a good colour sense, but that is hardly enough to carry a full-scale retrospective. Burra, on the other hand, had more than enough going on to sustain a big retrospective – the first in forty-odd years. There was plenty to enjoy here,  especially in his lively jazzy scenes of Paris and Harlem low life, and the pleasure only flagged when his darker, more monumental work from the war years (Spanish and World) took over. For me, the best of this exhibition, by far, came towards the end, with Burra's wonderful watercolour landscapes from the 1970s, towards the end of his life. I've written before about Burra and these extraordinary late watercolours, which I only learned about from Christopher Neve's classic Unquiet Landscape.  Among those on display at the Tate are Valley and River, Northumberland –

Near Whitby – 

And Landscape, Dartmoor – 

As Neve says, these paintings really have to be seen in the original, and I was delighted to have the opportunity.
   The next day's visit to the National Gallery, with an even older friend, was a joy. Seeing more of the great rehang only confirmed my initial impression that this has been extraordinarily effective in bringing a great collection alive, and making a great gallery even greater. I'll be back.