Rye Art Gallery is home to an impressive permanent collection of renowned local and national artists. Many of the works in the collection have been donated and the latest of these, kindly given by the family of Edward Burra (1905-1976), is a beautiful portrait of Edward’s mother, Ermentrude, painted in 1908, artist unknown.
This portrait is a welcome addition to Rye Art Gallery’s collection which already boasts a good number of artists’ self-portraits and portraits of the great and good of the town including historic portraits of the founder Mary Stormont, the artist Margaret Barnard and the past chair Geoffrey Bagley, another local artist who was also mayor of the town. The collection also contains paintings, photos, prints and drawings, ephemera and archive material from the life and work of Edward Burra.
Unfortunately, the gallery and the family of Edward Burra do not know who the painter of Ermentrude’s portrait is, although there is what looks like a very faint, and illegible, signature at the top (see picture below). It does look similar to portraits by artists in the permanent collection but so far, the identify of the painter is yet to be made. If anyone thinks that they may have further information about who the artist might be, please contact RAG director, Julian Day at the Rye Art Gallery.
Ermentrude Robertson-Luxford was born in 1881 and married Henry Curteis Burra (1870-1958) of Springfield in Playden in 1901. They had three children: Edward, Anne (later Lady Ritchie of Dundee) and Betsy, who died aged 13. Henry was a barrister and JP and Chairman of East Sussex County Council.
Edward Burra attended prep school in Potters Bar but after contracting pneumonia, he was educated at home in Springfield Lodge, Rye. Amongst the Burra archive held by the gallery is a collection of letters from Edward to his “Darling mama” written from his boarding school, some of which described his homesickness for Springfield, others playful:
“13 October 1915
…I wonder what the Hastings pantomime will be this year we must go to the gallery this time because of the war and eat oringes (sic) and drop the juice on the pit…Love snorks.”
At home, surrounded by books, he was encouraged to read and draw and went on to study life-drawing, illustration, and architectural drawing at the Chelsea School of Art from 1921-23, followed by two years at the Royal College of Art.
In 1925 Burra met Paul Nash who taught him wood engraving and collage and encouraged him to exhibit his work at the New English Art Club show in 1927. Burra travelled widely in Europe and America throughout the 20s and 30s and his observations and experience of the street scenes and nightlife of jazz-age Harlem, Paris, Marseilles and London are depicted in many of his works.
Nash introduced Burra to Surrealism; he exhibited six paintings in the 1936 International Surrealist exhibition in London. However, Burra did not confine himself to working within the Surrealist movement and his work is hard to categorise. He was a painter, in oil and increasingly in watercolour as his health declined, a draughtsman, printmaker, theatre and opera set and costume designer.
Burra is best-known for his scenes of those living on the margins in the dark underworld of urban life with all its seediness, edginess and sexual undercurrents. His lesser-known landscapes will be celebrated in the Tate Gallery exhibition in 2025 focusing on Burra’s later landscapes. Rye Art Gallery is very proud to contribute the Burra painting from the permanent collection Black Mountain, Wales 1968 to this exhibition.
The gallery is working to raise funds to bring the collection stores up to museum standard and to provide an archive room that offers better access for the local community and beyond for research and for viewing the collection. The target is £40,000 and the gallery has so far raised £15,000 towards this.
The Rye Art Gallery is open Monday to Saturday (closed on Tuesdays) 11am-5pm and Sunday 11am-4pm.
Rye Art Gallery, 107 High Street, Rye, East Sussex TN31 7JE.
Image Credits: Rye Art Gallery Permanent Collection , Rye Art Gallery , Juliet Duff , Donated by the Friends of the Rye Art Gallery and the National Art Collection Fund 1970 .
This reminds me of the work of an American artist called William Parsons Winchester Dana, who settled in London in 1878. There is a local connection because in 1908 his eldest daughter married Wilson Noble, MP for Hastings.
What a beautiful portrait of Ma. And very exciting to know there’s to be Burra show in the Tate next year.
Brilliant article from Juliet, always a highlight of the paper.