Missing Burra self-portrait sought

Edward Burra in 1927 with the missing portrait

The organisers of an exhibition of work by the idiosyncratic English painter Edward Burra have launched a search for a missing self-portrait of the artist.

Burra was admired by many but had little regard for his own work once it was finished - he said the action of painting was more important than the work itself.

As a clue, curator Angus Stewart only has a 1927 black and white photograph of the artist holding the picture.

Burra was preoccupied with the human body

"Self-portraits are the most intimate things," he said.

"It's true of all artists, there's something distinctive about them, and they can reveal so much."

Burra is considered one of the maverick talents of 20th century British art.

He was a founding member of the British modernist group Unit One which included Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth in 1933.

But his work is painted almost exclusively in watercolours and is very different to his UK contemporaries.

He layered the colours in an unusual manner, building up the pigment to give an effect akin to oil.

...for him, painting was what he was doing, not what he'd done

George Melly

For Stewart is these colours that are the key to enjoying Burra.

"He is the perfect colourist, with brilliant jewel colours, something that is especially unusual in a water colourists," he explained.

"For me, his work contains so much that I am constantly surprised by new things".

Indeed many of the owners of the work in this exhibition, most of which is privately owned, may get a surprise.

"We've cleaned the paintings up, polished the glass and I think one or two owners are going to come along and find details and quirks that they didn't even know were there."

Eccentric

Burra was born in 1905 and suffered from chronic ill-health all his life in the genteel Sussex seaside town of Rye, a place he dubbed "an overgrown gifte shoppe".

He travelled extensively and was prone to disappear from the family home without warning.

The famous series of paintings of Harlem in New York, with flamboyant streetwise characters and a keen eye for the bizarre, were inspired by a trip there in 1934.

This is very personal work and people tend to treat it very personally

Angus Stewart, curator

He does have a name for being an eccentric, perhaps because of these impromptu travels and response to his own work, but also because of his personality.

"He was a true stoic," says Stewart.

"He had no regard for physical comfort, he would eat anything, wear anything.

"He loved painting but would never talk about it and would just roll up his paintings and put them under the bed or throw them aside once they were finished."

Burra also designed sets and costumes for Ashton and Dame Ninette de Valois and for the Royal Opera.

The choreographer Frederick Ashton met Burra and later wrote of Burra: "I can think of no other painter who so well understood the absurdity and beauty of people."

Despite or perhaps because of his peculiarities Burra seems to have inspired an affection in the people who knew him and his work.

"This is very personal work and people tend to treat it very personally," says Stewart.

"When I was going around finding work for this exhibition, I would find that even people who had large collections of art, would keep the Burra close to them - either in the bedroom or the living room.

Edward Burra: Master of the Unpredictable runs at the Olympia, London 27 February - 4 March.