Viva Lewes April 2015 Issue #103

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David Jarman
Burra at the Jerwood
The Jerwood Gallery in Hastings,
which celebrated its third
birthday last month, is always
well worth a visit for its regularly
changing displays of works
from the Jerwood Foundation’s
superb collection of, mostly,
twentieth century British art.
Until 6 June, there is the added
bonus of an exhibition devoted
to Edward Burra (1905-76):
wonderful watercolours, drawings,
even a painted umbrella
stand thrown in for good
measure. Two small rooms, one
focusing on Burra and Rye, the
other on Burra and Hastings
itself, form a modest show, but a highly rewarding
one nonetheless.
Burra spent his whole life in and around Rye,
first at Springfield Lodge, the family home in
Playden, then, from 1953 until 1969, at Chapel
House in Rye itself. While there he painted The
Churchyard, Rye (1959-61), which the Jerwood
acquired in 2010. It’s this painting that provides
the jumping-off point for the exhibition. In 1969,
Burra returned to Playden to see out the remainder
of his life at 2, Springfield Cottages.
Burra had a distinctly jaundiced attitude to
Rye. Disparaging references to the town in his
letters are frequent. Here he is, in 1959, writing
to his lifelong friend William Chappell in the
idiosyncratic orthography that characterised his
correspondence: ‘Duckie little Tinker bell towne
is like an itsy bitsy morgue quayte dead.’
Still, it could have been worse. In a 1982 journal
entry, the novelist Anthony Powell, born in the
same year as the artist (their paths crossed in
Toulon in the late 1920s) records:
“When I was young, and people used to say – as
they often did – what an awful place Rye was,
with its tarted up antique
shops, bourgeois bohemians,
horse brasses and lesbians,
there was always someone to
add that Rye was nothing, in
such respects, to Winchelsea,
which was far worse.”
All his life Burra endured
chronic ill health (arthritis,
enlarged spleen, spherocytosis),
and this was, presumably,
the primary reason for remaining
in a town he loathed.
And he got on well with his
sister who lived close by. But
temperamentally, Burra found
Hastings much more sympathetic.
On his travels, intrepid considering his
health, he evinced a particular fondness for dodgy
ports like Marseille and Rotterdam. His friend
John Banting, whose painting of Burra is on loan
to the exhibition from the National Portrait
Gallery, moved from Rye to Hastings in 1965
and took up residence at 6, White Rock Gardens.
He and Burra regularly got plastered on trawls of
Hastings pubs. One of them is depicted in a 1971
painting that’s in the Jerwood show. Entitled simply
Hastings Pub, it’s identified as the Cambridge
Arms in Cambridge Road, now The Union Bar.
The painting is owned by Julian Barnes, presumably
the Julian Barnes. Alas, a more sober connection
with Hastings is that Burra died there, in St
Helen’s Hospital.
And that umbrella stand I mentioned? It was decorated
in 1923/4 by Burra and William Chappell
while they were staying at Florence Rushbury’s
cottage on Burton Common in Petworth. ‘Birdie’
Rushbury is, of course, the mother of Julia Ramos
and grandmother of Dominic Ramos, both ornaments
of today’s Lewes society and both artists in
their own right.
Portrait of Edward Burra by John Banting. ©The Estate of John Banting. All rights reserved, 2013 Bridgeman Art Library
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