posted on 09 Jul 2016

Penguin Modern Painters : Edward Burra with an essay by John Rothenstein

When I was younger and most art books were just too expensive for me to afford, the Penguin Modern Painters series was an absolute godsend. These 6”x4” card covered books were published immediately after the Second World war and were specifically designed to bring modern British artists to the attention of a wider public. The series included Henry Moore, Paul Nash. Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Edward Bawden, David Jones and several others – all artists who would become major names in global art circles.

These books could quite easily be picked up from second hand shops at the time (although they are much harder to find these days) and the attraction was two-fold. Firstly they had pretty good colour reproductions at a time when cheaper art books still relied heavily on black and white. Secondly, they were all accompanied by really top class appreciative essays by some of the leading art critics of the day – Herbert Read, John Betjeman, V.S. Pritchett, Geoffrey Grigson and Clive Bell amongst them.

This particular volume in the series introduced me to Edward Burra for the first time and I was completely captured. Burra ( 1905 – 1976) was a painter and printmaker who specialised in what might now be called maginalised and outsider communities. His depictions of life in 1930s black Harlem are probably his most famous collection but his woodblock prints (influenced by his close friendship with Paul Nash) and his theatre, opera and set designs are also remarkable.

Although his work was very hard to classify and his style didn’t fit clearly into a specific ‘movement’, he was often associated and exhibited with the English Surrealists and became a member of Unit One – a modernist movement founded by Paul Nash.

The essay in this Penguin Modern Masters edition has been written by John Rothenstein  who was Director of the Tate Gallery from 1938 – 1964. Rothenstein also had a considerable reputation as a documenter of modern English painters and this earned him the sobriquet of ‘the English Vasari’.

My copy of the Edward Burra Penguin Modern Painters was published in 1945 and the staples are now completely rusted away. However, I hang onto it because it’s such a significant book for me in my own journey of artistic discovery but also because affordable and accessible books covering the life and painting of Burra are still relatively hard to find and certainly pretty expensive.

From what I can establish there are 19 titles in this series produced by Penguin and the very early ones are hardcover, reverting to card a little later and there have been three different cover designs in that time. Now that’s something you could enjoy collecting.

Terry Potter

July 2016