EDWARD BURRA (1905-1976) - photo 1
EDWARD BURRA (1905-1976) - photo 2
EDWARD BURRA (1905-1976) - photo 3

EDWARD BURRA (1905-1976)

Lot 124
20.10.2022 13:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 70 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 831241
Lot 124 | EDWARD BURRA (1905-1976)
Estimate value
£ 70 000 – 100 000
EDWARD BURRA (1905-1976)

Café Bar

signed and dated 'E Burra/1954' (lower right)

watercolour and gouache on paper

22 x 29 3/4 in. (55.9 x 75.6 cm.)

Executed in 1952-54.





Provenance

with Lefevre Gallery, London.

Acquired by Sir Charles Forte, later Lord Forte (1908-2007), circa late 1960s, and by descent.



Literature

A. Causey, Edward Burra: Complete Catalogue, Oxford, 1985, n.p., no. 218, illustrated.



Exhibited

London, Lefevre Gallery, Edward Burra, April 1995, no. 13.



Special notice


Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.



Post lot text

‘I prefer drinking in a saloon I loathe drinking at home unless its people I know very well & don’t have to make an effort’
- Edward Burra

One of British art’s most brilliant social observers, the enigmatic painter Edward Burra is best-known for his startlingly perceptive and revealing scenes of everyday metropolitan life. Ranging from his depictions of bustling Soho tea houses and Paris cafes to those of Harlem night-clubs, Boston bars, and English seaside pubs, Burra was drawn to the rich variety of street and bar-room life in the many cities he visited and, in particular, to the energy and vitality he sound among its less fashionable, lower-class establishments. It was there, amongst the demi-monde that Burra felt himself most free to observe, memorise and record the extraordinary theatre provided by often larger-than-life characters, gaudy curiosities and fascinating, telling details of the world around him.

Executed in 1952-54, the present work is one of a poignant and spectacular series of paintings of bar and café-life that Burra made in the mid-1950s. It is a group of pictures which marks the artist’s last, brief return to this celebrated theme, after the austerity of the war years and a period preoccupied with dark-themes and before his later immersion into still-life and landscape painting. In the early 1950s, Burra was able, for the first time in a long while, to continue his practice of travelling frequently and variously. Like most of his paintings, however, Café Bar is a picture which was probably not painted during the visit but later, as was his practice, from memory, at home in Rye, Sussex. Burra as Mary Aitken recalled, had an extraordinary facility of visual recall. Several of his best-known bar-room paintings, such as that of Boston’s Silver Dollar Bar of circa 1953 (York City Art Gallery) for example, were painted years after Burra had frequented them. ‘What a memory’, Aitken wrote, ‘photographic - they couldn’t have been “like”! Especially of the essence which only Burra could do. We’re lucky they exist, especially since the bars themselves have gone forever. I shall always miss them, and thus be more grateful for the paintings, a lot juicy slice of life as it will never be lived again’ (Mary Aitken, quoted in exhibition catalogue, Edward Burra, Chichester, Pallant House, 2011, p. 66).

We are very grateful to Professor Jane Stevenson for her assistance in cataloguing this work.
Artist:Edward Burra (1905 - 1976)
Applied technique:Watercolor on paper
Auction house category:Paintings
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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20.10.2022 – 20.10.2022
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
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