Burra is not among the most well-known British artists. He spent much of his time at home in the ancient town of Rye, and yet despite having rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia travelled extensively. Tate Britain’s current retrospective follows his artistic development chronologically. Displaying a substantial portion of his oeuvre in spheres of influence. We join Burra on his travels, starting in Paris, moving to the United States, exploring Burra’s love of jazz, then to Spain and the civil war, where his painting takes a dark turn, before returning to the rolling hills of England. The exhibition charts his development in style from cartoonish beginnings to monumental surrealism, almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour.
Burra was from a well-off family based outside Rye in East Sussex. But like many young bohemians, they sought the visceral creative energy of the French capital across the channel. His paintings brim with astute observations. They are details galore, humorous watercolours satirising friends, family and characters he encountered on his late nights in Belleville. The devil is in the details, and his devilish humour is evident in his early work. These are conversation pieces; the influence of Hogarth is obvious, particularly in Marriage à la Mode (1928-1929). Burra captures amusing moments to the delight of the viewer, small groups cluster around the works, pointing out details to each other, laughing at Burra’s mischief.
The paintings are extremely joyful and rich in innuendo, for example, Dockside Café (1929). The execution of such soft detail in watercolour is masterful, and Burra was a fine draughtsman, which is demonstrated by sketches displayed in the second room. He worked like a magpie, collecting elements from literature, music, and film and infusing his paintings with them. The exhibition also displays unfinished collages showing the influence of cubism on his practice. He almost always worked with watercolour as his arthritis made standing at an easel difficult, though it did not stop him dancing, “me and Billy danced a beautiful tango. My dear, you should have seen it,” he wrote in a 1928 letter to a friend. In Paris, these were the “Années folles” (the crazy years), and there is an evident zest for life. The third room plays records from Burra’s collection; he was a music lover and always played jazz while he worked. Travelling to the United States, he frequented Harlem and was exposed to many of the period’s best jazz musicians.
In the subsequent rooms, the frivolity of his youth is sapped out of his work. Burra’s arthritis worsened with age; he was forced to leave Spain to avoid the civil war and returned to Rye. But Rye is quickly engulfed in preparations for war itself. Deemed a strategic area on the South coast, the town is placed in an exclusion zone, which isolates Burra from his friends. His medicines are rationed, and his mind turns to the cruelty of war. He assumes a darker outlook on life through the lens of surrealism, a kaleidoscope of horror influenced by Goya and Bosch, yet maintaining the eroticised plump round buttocks a consistent theme in his depiction of male figures from the sailors of Marseille to the Matadors of Madrid and then the soldiers of his war scenes, in these monumental works, Burra defies convention, elevating watercolour to the scale of mural. Men in uniform stab, crawl and groan over each other. Time seems warped, and the uniforms cross periods with soldiers donning Venetian masks.
After the war, Burra, now in his fifties, turns to theatre designing costumes and sets. The joyful satire of his early works vanishes, though his humour remains, albeit darker. Burra’s final works were comments on the plight of the countryside against modernisation, foreshadowing the climate crisis. He painted petrol stations, quarries and motorways splicing up Britain’s green and pleasant lands. In Cornish Clay Mines (1970), he jests with the viewer, one of the petrol pumps is labelled ‘Peeeee Superr’, a play on words recalling the pea soupers that killed thousands of people in London, the Great Smog of 1952 has been estimated to have caused 10,000 deaths. There’s a great morbid irony in this attack on the motorway and increasing traffic’s impact on the countryside, as to reach these landscapes he relied on them and never strayed far from the car, restricted by his worsening health.
An underappreciated artist who elevated watercolour to new heights and persisted with sharing his dark humour with the world despite his health, Edward Burra is on now at Tate Britain until 19 October 2025 and runs parallel with an exhibition of works by Ithell Colquhoun, offering visitors the chance to see two influential British artists with one ticket.
Burra is not among the most well-known British artists. He spent much of his time at home in the ancient town of Rye, and yet despite having rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia travelled extensively. Tate Britain’s current retrospective follows his artistic development chronologically. Displaying a substantial portion of his oeuvre in spheres of influence. We join Burra on his travels, starting in Paris, moving to the United States, exploring Burra’s love of jazz, then to Spain and the civil war, where his painting takes a dark turn, before returning to the rolling hills of England. The exhibition charts his development in style from cartoonish beginnings to monumental surrealism, almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour.
Burra was from a well-off family based outside Rye in East Sussex. But like many young bohemians, they sought the visceral creative energy of the French capital across the channel. His paintings brim with astute observations. They are details galore, humorous watercolours satirising friends, family and characters he encountered on his late nights in Belleville. The devil is in the details, and his devilish humour is evident in his early work. These are conversation pieces; the influence of Hogarth is obvious, particularly in Marriage à la Mode (1928-1929). Burra captures amusing moments to the delight of the viewer, small groups cluster around the works, pointing out details to each other, laughing at Burra’s mischief.
The paintings are extremely joyful and rich in innuendo, for example, Dockside Café (1929). The execution of such soft detail in watercolour is masterful, and Burra was a fine draughtsman, which is demonstrated by sketches displayed in the second room. He worked like a magpie, collecting elements from literature, music, and film and infusing his paintings with them. The exhibition also displays unfinished collages showing the influence of cubism on his practice. He almost always worked with watercolour as his arthritis made standing at an easel difficult, though it did not stop him dancing, “me and Billy danced a beautiful tango. My dear, you should have seen it,” he wrote in a 1928 letter to a friend. In Paris, these were the “Années folles” (the crazy years), and there is an evident zest for life. The third room plays records from Burra’s collection; he was a music lover and always played jazz while he worked. Travelling to the United States, he frequented Harlem and was exposed to many of the period’s best jazz musicians.
In the subsequent rooms, the frivolity of his youth is sapped out of his work. Burra’s arthritis worsened with age; he was forced to leave Spain to avoid the civil war and returned to Rye. But Rye is quickly engulfed in preparations for war itself. Deemed a strategic area on the South coast, the town is placed in an exclusion zone, which isolates Burra from his friends. His medicines are rationed, and his mind turns to the cruelty of war. He assumes a darker outlook on life through the lens of surrealism, a kaleidoscope of horror influenced by Goya and Bosch, yet maintaining the eroticised plump round buttocks a consistent theme in his depiction of male figures from the sailors of Marseille to the Matadors of Madrid and then the soldiers of his war scenes, in these monumental works, Burra defies convention, elevating watercolour to the scale of mural. Men in uniform stab, crawl and groan over each other. Time seems warped, and the uniforms cross periods with soldiers donning Venetian masks.
After the war, Burra, now in his fifties, turns to theatre designing costumes and sets. The joyful satire of his early works vanishes, though his humour remains, albeit darker. Burra’s final works were comments on the plight of the countryside against modernisation, foreshadowing the climate crisis. He painted petrol stations, quarries and motorways splicing up Britain’s green and pleasant lands. In Cornish Clay Mines (1970), he jests with the viewer, one of the petrol pumps is labelled ‘Peeeee Superr’, a play on words recalling the pea soupers that killed thousands of people in London, the Great Smog of 1952 has been estimated to have caused 10,000 deaths. There’s a great morbid irony in this attack on the motorway and increasing traffic’s impact on the countryside, as to reach these landscapes he relied on them and never strayed far from the car, restricted by his worsening health.
An underappreciated artist who elevated watercolour to new heights and persisted with sharing his dark humour with the world despite his health, Edward Burra is on now at Tate Britain until 19 October 2025 and runs parallel with an exhibition of works by Ithell Colquhoun, offering visitors the chance to see two influential British artists with one ticket.
Burra is not among the most well-known British artists. He spent much of his time at home in the ancient town of Rye, and yet despite having rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia travelled extensively. Tate Britain’s current retrospective follows his artistic development chronologically. Displaying a substantial portion of his oeuvre in spheres of influence. We join Burra on his travels, starting in Paris, moving to the United States, exploring Burra’s love of jazz, then to Spain and the civil war, where his painting takes a dark turn, before returning to the rolling hills of England. The exhibition charts his development in style from cartoonish beginnings to monumental surrealism, almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour.
Burra was from a well-off family based outside Rye in East Sussex. But like many young bohemians, they sought the visceral creative energy of the French capital across the channel. His paintings brim with astute observations. They are details galore, humorous watercolours satirising friends, family and characters he encountered on his late nights in Belleville. The devil is in the details, and his devilish humour is evident in his early work. These are conversation pieces; the influence of Hogarth is obvious, particularly in Marriage à la Mode (1928-1929). Burra captures amusing moments to the delight of the viewer, small groups cluster around the works, pointing out details to each other, laughing at Burra’s mischief.
The paintings are extremely joyful and rich in innuendo, for example, Dockside Café (1929). The execution of such soft detail in watercolour is masterful, and Burra was a fine draughtsman, which is demonstrated by sketches displayed in the second room. He worked like a magpie, collecting elements from literature, music, and film and infusing his paintings with them. The exhibition also displays unfinished collages showing the influence of cubism on his practice. He almost always worked with watercolour as his arthritis made standing at an easel difficult, though it did not stop him dancing, “me and Billy danced a beautiful tango. My dear, you should have seen it,” he wrote in a 1928 letter to a friend. In Paris, these were the “Années folles” (the crazy years), and there is an evident zest for life. The third room plays records from Burra’s collection; he was a music lover and always played jazz while he worked. Travelling to the United States, he frequented Harlem and was exposed to many of the period’s best jazz musicians.
In the subsequent rooms, the frivolity of his youth is sapped out of his work. Burra’s arthritis worsened with age; he was forced to leave Spain to avoid the civil war and returned to Rye. But Rye is quickly engulfed in preparations for war itself. Deemed a strategic area on the South coast, the town is placed in an exclusion zone, which isolates Burra from his friends. His medicines are rationed, and his mind turns to the cruelty of war. He assumes a darker outlook on life through the lens of surrealism, a kaleidoscope of horror influenced by Goya and Bosch, yet maintaining the eroticised plump round buttocks a consistent theme in his depiction of male figures from the sailors of Marseille to the Matadors of Madrid and then the soldiers of his war scenes, in these monumental works, Burra defies convention, elevating watercolour to the scale of mural. Men in uniform stab, crawl and groan over each other. Time seems warped, and the uniforms cross periods with soldiers donning Venetian masks.
After the war, Burra, now in his fifties, turns to theatre designing costumes and sets. The joyful satire of his early works vanishes, though his humour remains, albeit darker. Burra’s final works were comments on the plight of the countryside against modernisation, foreshadowing the climate crisis. He painted petrol stations, quarries and motorways splicing up Britain’s green and pleasant lands. In Cornish Clay Mines (1970), he jests with the viewer, one of the petrol pumps is labelled ‘Peeeee Superr’, a play on words recalling the pea soupers that killed thousands of people in London, the Great Smog of 1952 has been estimated to have caused 10,000 deaths. There’s a great morbid irony in this attack on the motorway and increasing traffic’s impact on the countryside, as to reach these landscapes he relied on them and never strayed far from the car, restricted by his worsening health.
An underappreciated artist who elevated watercolour to new heights and persisted with sharing his dark humour with the world despite his health, Edward Burra is on now at Tate Britain until 19 October 2025 and runs parallel with an exhibition of works by Ithell Colquhoun, offering visitors the chance to see two influential British artists with one ticket.
Burra is not among the most well-known British artists. He spent much of his time at home in the ancient town of Rye, and yet despite having rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia travelled extensively. Tate Britain’s current retrospective follows his artistic development chronologically. Displaying a substantial portion of his oeuvre in spheres of influence. We join Burra on his travels, starting in Paris, moving to the United States, exploring Burra’s love of jazz, then to Spain and the civil war, where his painting takes a dark turn, before returning to the rolling hills of England. The exhibition charts his development in style from cartoonish beginnings to monumental surrealism, almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour.
Burra was from a well-off family based outside Rye in East Sussex. But like many young bohemians, they sought the visceral creative energy of the French capital across the channel. His paintings brim with astute observations. They are details galore, humorous watercolours satirising friends, family and characters he encountered on his late nights in Belleville. The devil is in the details, and his devilish humour is evident in his early work. These are conversation pieces; the influence of Hogarth is obvious, particularly in Marriage à la Mode (1928-1929). Burra captures amusing moments to the delight of the viewer, small groups cluster around the works, pointing out details to each other, laughing at Burra’s mischief.
The paintings are extremely joyful and rich in innuendo, for example, Dockside Café (1929). The execution of such soft detail in watercolour is masterful, and Burra was a fine draughtsman, which is demonstrated by sketches displayed in the second room. He worked like a magpie, collecting elements from literature, music, and film and infusing his paintings with them. The exhibition also displays unfinished collages showing the influence of cubism on his practice. He almost always worked with watercolour as his arthritis made standing at an easel difficult, though it did not stop him dancing, “me and Billy danced a beautiful tango. My dear, you should have seen it,” he wrote in a 1928 letter to a friend. In Paris, these were the “Années folles” (the crazy years), and there is an evident zest for life. The third room plays records from Burra’s collection; he was a music lover and always played jazz while he worked. Travelling to the United States, he frequented Harlem and was exposed to many of the period’s best jazz musicians.
In the subsequent rooms, the frivolity of his youth is sapped out of his work. Burra’s arthritis worsened with age; he was forced to leave Spain to avoid the civil war and returned to Rye. But Rye is quickly engulfed in preparations for war itself. Deemed a strategic area on the South coast, the town is placed in an exclusion zone, which isolates Burra from his friends. His medicines are rationed, and his mind turns to the cruelty of war. He assumes a darker outlook on life through the lens of surrealism, a kaleidoscope of horror influenced by Goya and Bosch, yet maintaining the eroticised plump round buttocks a consistent theme in his depiction of male figures from the sailors of Marseille to the Matadors of Madrid and then the soldiers of his war scenes, in these monumental works, Burra defies convention, elevating watercolour to the scale of mural. Men in uniform stab, crawl and groan over each other. Time seems warped, and the uniforms cross periods with soldiers donning Venetian masks.
After the war, Burra, now in his fifties, turns to theatre designing costumes and sets. The joyful satire of his early works vanishes, though his humour remains, albeit darker. Burra’s final works were comments on the plight of the countryside against modernisation, foreshadowing the climate crisis. He painted petrol stations, quarries and motorways splicing up Britain’s green and pleasant lands. In Cornish Clay Mines (1970), he jests with the viewer, one of the petrol pumps is labelled ‘Peeeee Superr’, a play on words recalling the pea soupers that killed thousands of people in London, the Great Smog of 1952 has been estimated to have caused 10,000 deaths. There’s a great morbid irony in this attack on the motorway and increasing traffic’s impact on the countryside, as to reach these landscapes he relied on them and never strayed far from the car, restricted by his worsening health.
An underappreciated artist who elevated watercolour to new heights and persisted with sharing his dark humour with the world despite his health, Edward Burra is on now at Tate Britain until 19 October 2025 and runs parallel with an exhibition of works by Ithell Colquhoun, offering visitors the chance to see two influential British artists with one ticket.
Burra is not among the most well-known British artists. He spent much of his time at home in the ancient town of Rye, and yet despite having rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia travelled extensively. Tate Britain’s current retrospective follows his artistic development chronologically. Displaying a substantial portion of his oeuvre in spheres of influence. We join Burra on his travels, starting in Paris, moving to the United States, exploring Burra’s love of jazz, then to Spain and the civil war, where his painting takes a dark turn, before returning to the rolling hills of England. The exhibition charts his development in style from cartoonish beginnings to monumental surrealism, almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour.
Burra was from a well-off family based outside Rye in East Sussex. But like many young bohemians, they sought the visceral creative energy of the French capital across the channel. His paintings brim with astute observations. They are details galore, humorous watercolours satirising friends, family and characters he encountered on his late nights in Belleville. The devil is in the details, and his devilish humour is evident in his early work. These are conversation pieces; the influence of Hogarth is obvious, particularly in Marriage à la Mode (1928-1929). Burra captures amusing moments to the delight of the viewer, small groups cluster around the works, pointing out details to each other, laughing at Burra’s mischief.
The paintings are extremely joyful and rich in innuendo, for example, Dockside Café (1929). The execution of such soft detail in watercolour is masterful, and Burra was a fine draughtsman, which is demonstrated by sketches displayed in the second room. He worked like a magpie, collecting elements from literature, music, and film and infusing his paintings with them. The exhibition also displays unfinished collages showing the influence of cubism on his practice. He almost always worked with watercolour as his arthritis made standing at an easel difficult, though it did not stop him dancing, “me and Billy danced a beautiful tango. My dear, you should have seen it,” he wrote in a 1928 letter to a friend. In Paris, these were the “Années folles” (the crazy years), and there is an evident zest for life. The third room plays records from Burra’s collection; he was a music lover and always played jazz while he worked. Travelling to the United States, he frequented Harlem and was exposed to many of the period’s best jazz musicians.
In the subsequent rooms, the frivolity of his youth is sapped out of his work. Burra’s arthritis worsened with age; he was forced to leave Spain to avoid the civil war and returned to Rye. But Rye is quickly engulfed in preparations for war itself. Deemed a strategic area on the South coast, the town is placed in an exclusion zone, which isolates Burra from his friends. His medicines are rationed, and his mind turns to the cruelty of war. He assumes a darker outlook on life through the lens of surrealism, a kaleidoscope of horror influenced by Goya and Bosch, yet maintaining the eroticised plump round buttocks a consistent theme in his depiction of male figures from the sailors of Marseille to the Matadors of Madrid and then the soldiers of his war scenes, in these monumental works, Burra defies convention, elevating watercolour to the scale of mural. Men in uniform stab, crawl and groan over each other. Time seems warped, and the uniforms cross periods with soldiers donning Venetian masks.
After the war, Burra, now in his fifties, turns to theatre designing costumes and sets. The joyful satire of his early works vanishes, though his humour remains, albeit darker. Burra’s final works were comments on the plight of the countryside against modernisation, foreshadowing the climate crisis. He painted petrol stations, quarries and motorways splicing up Britain’s green and pleasant lands. In Cornish Clay Mines (1970), he jests with the viewer, one of the petrol pumps is labelled ‘Peeeee Superr’, a play on words recalling the pea soupers that killed thousands of people in London, the Great Smog of 1952 has been estimated to have caused 10,000 deaths. There’s a great morbid irony in this attack on the motorway and increasing traffic’s impact on the countryside, as to reach these landscapes he relied on them and never strayed far from the car, restricted by his worsening health.
An underappreciated artist who elevated watercolour to new heights and persisted with sharing his dark humour with the world despite his health, Edward Burra is on now at Tate Britain until 19 October 2025 and runs parallel with an exhibition of works by Ithell Colquhoun, offering visitors the chance to see two influential British artists with one ticket.
Burra is not among the most well-known British artists. He spent much of his time at home in the ancient town of Rye, and yet despite having rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia travelled extensively. Tate Britain’s current retrospective follows his artistic development chronologically. Displaying a substantial portion of his oeuvre in spheres of influence. We join Burra on his travels, starting in Paris, moving to the United States, exploring Burra’s love of jazz, then to Spain and the civil war, where his painting takes a dark turn, before returning to the rolling hills of England. The exhibition charts his development in style from cartoonish beginnings to monumental surrealism, almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour.
Burra was from a well-off family based outside Rye in East Sussex. But like many young bohemians, they sought the visceral creative energy of the French capital across the channel. His paintings brim with astute observations. They are details galore, humorous watercolours satirising friends, family and characters he encountered on his late nights in Belleville. The devil is in the details, and his devilish humour is evident in his early work. These are conversation pieces; the influence of Hogarth is obvious, particularly in Marriage à la Mode (1928-1929). Burra captures amusing moments to the delight of the viewer, small groups cluster around the works, pointing out details to each other, laughing at Burra’s mischief.
The paintings are extremely joyful and rich in innuendo, for example, Dockside Café (1929). The execution of such soft detail in watercolour is masterful, and Burra was a fine draughtsman, which is demonstrated by sketches displayed in the second room. He worked like a magpie, collecting elements from literature, music, and film and infusing his paintings with them. The exhibition also displays unfinished collages showing the influence of cubism on his practice. He almost always worked with watercolour as his arthritis made standing at an easel difficult, though it did not stop him dancing, “me and Billy danced a beautiful tango. My dear, you should have seen it,” he wrote in a 1928 letter to a friend. In Paris, these were the “Années folles” (the crazy years), and there is an evident zest for life. The third room plays records from Burra’s collection; he was a music lover and always played jazz while he worked. Travelling to the United States, he frequented Harlem and was exposed to many of the period’s best jazz musicians.
In the subsequent rooms, the frivolity of his youth is sapped out of his work. Burra’s arthritis worsened with age; he was forced to leave Spain to avoid the civil war and returned to Rye. But Rye is quickly engulfed in preparations for war itself. Deemed a strategic area on the South coast, the town is placed in an exclusion zone, which isolates Burra from his friends. His medicines are rationed, and his mind turns to the cruelty of war. He assumes a darker outlook on life through the lens of surrealism, a kaleidoscope of horror influenced by Goya and Bosch, yet maintaining the eroticised plump round buttocks a consistent theme in his depiction of male figures from the sailors of Marseille to the Matadors of Madrid and then the soldiers of his war scenes, in these monumental works, Burra defies convention, elevating watercolour to the scale of mural. Men in uniform stab, crawl and groan over each other. Time seems warped, and the uniforms cross periods with soldiers donning Venetian masks.
After the war, Burra, now in his fifties, turns to theatre designing costumes and sets. The joyful satire of his early works vanishes, though his humour remains, albeit darker. Burra’s final works were comments on the plight of the countryside against modernisation, foreshadowing the climate crisis. He painted petrol stations, quarries and motorways splicing up Britain’s green and pleasant lands. In Cornish Clay Mines (1970), he jests with the viewer, one of the petrol pumps is labelled ‘Peeeee Superr’, a play on words recalling the pea soupers that killed thousands of people in London, the Great Smog of 1952 has been estimated to have caused 10,000 deaths. There’s a great morbid irony in this attack on the motorway and increasing traffic’s impact on the countryside, as to reach these landscapes he relied on them and never strayed far from the car, restricted by his worsening health.
An underappreciated artist who elevated watercolour to new heights and persisted with sharing his dark humour with the world despite his health, Edward Burra is on now at Tate Britain until 19 October 2025 and runs parallel with an exhibition of works by Ithell Colquhoun, offering visitors the chance to see two influential British artists with one ticket.
Burra is not among the most well-known British artists. He spent much of his time at home in the ancient town of Rye, and yet despite having rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia travelled extensively. Tate Britain’s current retrospective follows his artistic development chronologically. Displaying a substantial portion of his oeuvre in spheres of influence. We join Burra on his travels, starting in Paris, moving to the United States, exploring Burra’s love of jazz, then to Spain and the civil war, where his painting takes a dark turn, before returning to the rolling hills of England. The exhibition charts his development in style from cartoonish beginnings to monumental surrealism, almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour.
Burra was from a well-off family based outside Rye in East Sussex. But like many young bohemians, they sought the visceral creative energy of the French capital across the channel. His paintings brim with astute observations. They are details galore, humorous watercolours satirising friends, family and characters he encountered on his late nights in Belleville. The devil is in the details, and his devilish humour is evident in his early work. These are conversation pieces; the influence of Hogarth is obvious, particularly in Marriage à la Mode (1928-1929). Burra captures amusing moments to the delight of the viewer, small groups cluster around the works, pointing out details to each other, laughing at Burra’s mischief.
The paintings are extremely joyful and rich in innuendo, for example, Dockside Café (1929). The execution of such soft detail in watercolour is masterful, and Burra was a fine draughtsman, which is demonstrated by sketches displayed in the second room. He worked like a magpie, collecting elements from literature, music, and film and infusing his paintings with them. The exhibition also displays unfinished collages showing the influence of cubism on his practice. He almost always worked with watercolour as his arthritis made standing at an easel difficult, though it did not stop him dancing, “me and Billy danced a beautiful tango. My dear, you should have seen it,” he wrote in a 1928 letter to a friend. In Paris, these were the “Années folles” (the crazy years), and there is an evident zest for life. The third room plays records from Burra’s collection; he was a music lover and always played jazz while he worked. Travelling to the United States, he frequented Harlem and was exposed to many of the period’s best jazz musicians.
In the subsequent rooms, the frivolity of his youth is sapped out of his work. Burra’s arthritis worsened with age; he was forced to leave Spain to avoid the civil war and returned to Rye. But Rye is quickly engulfed in preparations for war itself. Deemed a strategic area on the South coast, the town is placed in an exclusion zone, which isolates Burra from his friends. His medicines are rationed, and his mind turns to the cruelty of war. He assumes a darker outlook on life through the lens of surrealism, a kaleidoscope of horror influenced by Goya and Bosch, yet maintaining the eroticised plump round buttocks a consistent theme in his depiction of male figures from the sailors of Marseille to the Matadors of Madrid and then the soldiers of his war scenes, in these monumental works, Burra defies convention, elevating watercolour to the scale of mural. Men in uniform stab, crawl and groan over each other. Time seems warped, and the uniforms cross periods with soldiers donning Venetian masks.
After the war, Burra, now in his fifties, turns to theatre designing costumes and sets. The joyful satire of his early works vanishes, though his humour remains, albeit darker. Burra’s final works were comments on the plight of the countryside against modernisation, foreshadowing the climate crisis. He painted petrol stations, quarries and motorways splicing up Britain’s green and pleasant lands. In Cornish Clay Mines (1970), he jests with the viewer, one of the petrol pumps is labelled ‘Peeeee Superr’, a play on words recalling the pea soupers that killed thousands of people in London, the Great Smog of 1952 has been estimated to have caused 10,000 deaths. There’s a great morbid irony in this attack on the motorway and increasing traffic’s impact on the countryside, as to reach these landscapes he relied on them and never strayed far from the car, restricted by his worsening health.
An underappreciated artist who elevated watercolour to new heights and persisted with sharing his dark humour with the world despite his health, Edward Burra is on now at Tate Britain until 19 October 2025 and runs parallel with an exhibition of works by Ithell Colquhoun, offering visitors the chance to see two influential British artists with one ticket.
Burra is not among the most well-known British artists. He spent much of his time at home in the ancient town of Rye, and yet despite having rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia travelled extensively. Tate Britain’s current retrospective follows his artistic development chronologically. Displaying a substantial portion of his oeuvre in spheres of influence. We join Burra on his travels, starting in Paris, moving to the United States, exploring Burra’s love of jazz, then to Spain and the civil war, where his painting takes a dark turn, before returning to the rolling hills of England. The exhibition charts his development in style from cartoonish beginnings to monumental surrealism, almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour.
Burra was from a well-off family based outside Rye in East Sussex. But like many young bohemians, they sought the visceral creative energy of the French capital across the channel. His paintings brim with astute observations. They are details galore, humorous watercolours satirising friends, family and characters he encountered on his late nights in Belleville. The devil is in the details, and his devilish humour is evident in his early work. These are conversation pieces; the influence of Hogarth is obvious, particularly in Marriage à la Mode (1928-1929). Burra captures amusing moments to the delight of the viewer, small groups cluster around the works, pointing out details to each other, laughing at Burra’s mischief.
The paintings are extremely joyful and rich in innuendo, for example, Dockside Café (1929). The execution of such soft detail in watercolour is masterful, and Burra was a fine draughtsman, which is demonstrated by sketches displayed in the second room. He worked like a magpie, collecting elements from literature, music, and film and infusing his paintings with them. The exhibition also displays unfinished collages showing the influence of cubism on his practice. He almost always worked with watercolour as his arthritis made standing at an easel difficult, though it did not stop him dancing, “me and Billy danced a beautiful tango. My dear, you should have seen it,” he wrote in a 1928 letter to a friend. In Paris, these were the “Années folles” (the crazy years), and there is an evident zest for life. The third room plays records from Burra’s collection; he was a music lover and always played jazz while he worked. Travelling to the United States, he frequented Harlem and was exposed to many of the period’s best jazz musicians.
In the subsequent rooms, the frivolity of his youth is sapped out of his work. Burra’s arthritis worsened with age; he was forced to leave Spain to avoid the civil war and returned to Rye. But Rye is quickly engulfed in preparations for war itself. Deemed a strategic area on the South coast, the town is placed in an exclusion zone, which isolates Burra from his friends. His medicines are rationed, and his mind turns to the cruelty of war. He assumes a darker outlook on life through the lens of surrealism, a kaleidoscope of horror influenced by Goya and Bosch, yet maintaining the eroticised plump round buttocks a consistent theme in his depiction of male figures from the sailors of Marseille to the Matadors of Madrid and then the soldiers of his war scenes, in these monumental works, Burra defies convention, elevating watercolour to the scale of mural. Men in uniform stab, crawl and groan over each other. Time seems warped, and the uniforms cross periods with soldiers donning Venetian masks.
After the war, Burra, now in his fifties, turns to theatre designing costumes and sets. The joyful satire of his early works vanishes, though his humour remains, albeit darker. Burra’s final works were comments on the plight of the countryside against modernisation, foreshadowing the climate crisis. He painted petrol stations, quarries and motorways splicing up Britain’s green and pleasant lands. In Cornish Clay Mines (1970), he jests with the viewer, one of the petrol pumps is labelled ‘Peeeee Superr’, a play on words recalling the pea soupers that killed thousands of people in London, the Great Smog of 1952 has been estimated to have caused 10,000 deaths. There’s a great morbid irony in this attack on the motorway and increasing traffic’s impact on the countryside, as to reach these landscapes he relied on them and never strayed far from the car, restricted by his worsening health.
An underappreciated artist who elevated watercolour to new heights and persisted with sharing his dark humour with the world despite his health, Edward Burra is on now at Tate Britain until 19 October 2025 and runs parallel with an exhibition of works by Ithell Colquhoun, offering visitors the chance to see two influential British artists with one ticket.
Burra is not among the most well-known British artists. He spent much of his time at home in the ancient town of Rye, and yet despite having rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia travelled extensively. Tate Britain’s current retrospective follows his artistic development chronologically. Displaying a substantial portion of his oeuvre in spheres of influence. We join Burra on his travels, starting in Paris, moving to the United States, exploring Burra’s love of jazz, then to Spain and the civil war, where his painting takes a dark turn, before returning to the rolling hills of England. The exhibition charts his development in style from cartoonish beginnings to monumental surrealism, almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour.
Burra was from a well-off family based outside Rye in East Sussex. But like many young bohemians, they sought the visceral creative energy of the French capital across the channel. His paintings brim with astute observations. They are details galore, humorous watercolours satirising friends, family and characters he encountered on his late nights in Belleville. The devil is in the details, and his devilish humour is evident in his early work. These are conversation pieces; the influence of Hogarth is obvious, particularly in Marriage à la Mode (1928-1929). Burra captures amusing moments to the delight of the viewer, small groups cluster around the works, pointing out details to each other, laughing at Burra’s mischief.
The paintings are extremely joyful and rich in innuendo, for example, Dockside Café (1929). The execution of such soft detail in watercolour is masterful, and Burra was a fine draughtsman, which is demonstrated by sketches displayed in the second room. He worked like a magpie, collecting elements from literature, music, and film and infusing his paintings with them. The exhibition also displays unfinished collages showing the influence of cubism on his practice. He almost always worked with watercolour as his arthritis made standing at an easel difficult, though it did not stop him dancing, “me and Billy danced a beautiful tango. My dear, you should have seen it,” he wrote in a 1928 letter to a friend. In Paris, these were the “Années folles” (the crazy years), and there is an evident zest for life. The third room plays records from Burra’s collection; he was a music lover and always played jazz while he worked. Travelling to the United States, he frequented Harlem and was exposed to many of the period’s best jazz musicians.
In the subsequent rooms, the frivolity of his youth is sapped out of his work. Burra’s arthritis worsened with age; he was forced to leave Spain to avoid the civil war and returned to Rye. But Rye is quickly engulfed in preparations for war itself. Deemed a strategic area on the South coast, the town is placed in an exclusion zone, which isolates Burra from his friends. His medicines are rationed, and his mind turns to the cruelty of war. He assumes a darker outlook on life through the lens of surrealism, a kaleidoscope of horror influenced by Goya and Bosch, yet maintaining the eroticised plump round buttocks a consistent theme in his depiction of male figures from the sailors of Marseille to the Matadors of Madrid and then the soldiers of his war scenes, in these monumental works, Burra defies convention, elevating watercolour to the scale of mural. Men in uniform stab, crawl and groan over each other. Time seems warped, and the uniforms cross periods with soldiers donning Venetian masks.
After the war, Burra, now in his fifties, turns to theatre designing costumes and sets. The joyful satire of his early works vanishes, though his humour remains, albeit darker. Burra’s final works were comments on the plight of the countryside against modernisation, foreshadowing the climate crisis. He painted petrol stations, quarries and motorways splicing up Britain’s green and pleasant lands. In Cornish Clay Mines (1970), he jests with the viewer, one of the petrol pumps is labelled ‘Peeeee Superr’, a play on words recalling the pea soupers that killed thousands of people in London, the Great Smog of 1952 has been estimated to have caused 10,000 deaths. There’s a great morbid irony in this attack on the motorway and increasing traffic’s impact on the countryside, as to reach these landscapes he relied on them and never strayed far from the car, restricted by his worsening health.
An underappreciated artist who elevated watercolour to new heights and persisted with sharing his dark humour with the world despite his health, Edward Burra is on now at Tate Britain until 19 October 2025 and runs parallel with an exhibition of works by Ithell Colquhoun, offering visitors the chance to see two influential British artists with one ticket.
Burra is not among the most well-known British artists. He spent much of his time at home in the ancient town of Rye, and yet despite having rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia travelled extensively. Tate Britain’s current retrospective follows his artistic development chronologically. Displaying a substantial portion of his oeuvre in spheres of influence. We join Burra on his travels, starting in Paris, moving to the United States, exploring Burra’s love of jazz, then to Spain and the civil war, where his painting takes a dark turn, before returning to the rolling hills of England. The exhibition charts his development in style from cartoonish beginnings to monumental surrealism, almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour.
Burra was from a well-off family based outside Rye in East Sussex. But like many young bohemians, they sought the visceral creative energy of the French capital across the channel. His paintings brim with astute observations. They are details galore, humorous watercolours satirising friends, family and characters he encountered on his late nights in Belleville. The devil is in the details, and his devilish humour is evident in his early work. These are conversation pieces; the influence of Hogarth is obvious, particularly in Marriage à la Mode (1928-1929). Burra captures amusing moments to the delight of the viewer, small groups cluster around the works, pointing out details to each other, laughing at Burra’s mischief.
The paintings are extremely joyful and rich in innuendo, for example, Dockside Café (1929). The execution of such soft detail in watercolour is masterful, and Burra was a fine draughtsman, which is demonstrated by sketches displayed in the second room. He worked like a magpie, collecting elements from literature, music, and film and infusing his paintings with them. The exhibition also displays unfinished collages showing the influence of cubism on his practice. He almost always worked with watercolour as his arthritis made standing at an easel difficult, though it did not stop him dancing, “me and Billy danced a beautiful tango. My dear, you should have seen it,” he wrote in a 1928 letter to a friend. In Paris, these were the “Années folles” (the crazy years), and there is an evident zest for life. The third room plays records from Burra’s collection; he was a music lover and always played jazz while he worked. Travelling to the United States, he frequented Harlem and was exposed to many of the period’s best jazz musicians.
In the subsequent rooms, the frivolity of his youth is sapped out of his work. Burra’s arthritis worsened with age; he was forced to leave Spain to avoid the civil war and returned to Rye. But Rye is quickly engulfed in preparations for war itself. Deemed a strategic area on the South coast, the town is placed in an exclusion zone, which isolates Burra from his friends. His medicines are rationed, and his mind turns to the cruelty of war. He assumes a darker outlook on life through the lens of surrealism, a kaleidoscope of horror influenced by Goya and Bosch, yet maintaining the eroticised plump round buttocks a consistent theme in his depiction of male figures from the sailors of Marseille to the Matadors of Madrid and then the soldiers of his war scenes, in these monumental works, Burra defies convention, elevating watercolour to the scale of mural. Men in uniform stab, crawl and groan over each other. Time seems warped, and the uniforms cross periods with soldiers donning Venetian masks.
After the war, Burra, now in his fifties, turns to theatre designing costumes and sets. The joyful satire of his early works vanishes, though his humour remains, albeit darker. Burra’s final works were comments on the plight of the countryside against modernisation, foreshadowing the climate crisis. He painted petrol stations, quarries and motorways splicing up Britain’s green and pleasant lands. In Cornish Clay Mines (1970), he jests with the viewer, one of the petrol pumps is labelled ‘Peeeee Superr’, a play on words recalling the pea soupers that killed thousands of people in London, the Great Smog of 1952 has been estimated to have caused 10,000 deaths. There’s a great morbid irony in this attack on the motorway and increasing traffic’s impact on the countryside, as to reach these landscapes he relied on them and never strayed far from the car, restricted by his worsening health.
An underappreciated artist who elevated watercolour to new heights and persisted with sharing his dark humour with the world despite his health, Edward Burra is on now at Tate Britain until 19 October 2025 and runs parallel with an exhibition of works by Ithell Colquhoun, offering visitors the chance to see two influential British artists with one ticket.
Burra is not among the most well-known British artists. He spent much of his time at home in the ancient town of Rye, and yet despite having rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia travelled extensively. Tate Britain’s current retrospective follows his artistic development chronologically. Displaying a substantial portion of his oeuvre in spheres of influence. We join Burra on his travels, starting in Paris, moving to the United States, exploring Burra’s love of jazz, then to Spain and the civil war, where his painting takes a dark turn, before returning to the rolling hills of England. The exhibition charts his development in style from cartoonish beginnings to monumental surrealism, almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour.
Burra was from a well-off family based outside Rye in East Sussex. But like many young bohemians, they sought the visceral creative energy of the French capital across the channel. His paintings brim with astute observations. They are details galore, humorous watercolours satirising friends, family and characters he encountered on his late nights in Belleville. The devil is in the details, and his devilish humour is evident in his early work. These are conversation pieces; the influence of Hogarth is obvious, particularly in Marriage à la Mode (1928-1929). Burra captures amusing moments to the delight of the viewer, small groups cluster around the works, pointing out details to each other, laughing at Burra’s mischief.
The paintings are extremely joyful and rich in innuendo, for example, Dockside Café (1929). The execution of such soft detail in watercolour is masterful, and Burra was a fine draughtsman, which is demonstrated by sketches displayed in the second room. He worked like a magpie, collecting elements from literature, music, and film and infusing his paintings with them. The exhibition also displays unfinished collages showing the influence of cubism on his practice. He almost always worked with watercolour as his arthritis made standing at an easel difficult, though it did not stop him dancing, “me and Billy danced a beautiful tango. My dear, you should have seen it,” he wrote in a 1928 letter to a friend. In Paris, these were the “Années folles” (the crazy years), and there is an evident zest for life. The third room plays records from Burra’s collection; he was a music lover and always played jazz while he worked. Travelling to the United States, he frequented Harlem and was exposed to many of the period’s best jazz musicians.
In the subsequent rooms, the frivolity of his youth is sapped out of his work. Burra’s arthritis worsened with age; he was forced to leave Spain to avoid the civil war and returned to Rye. But Rye is quickly engulfed in preparations for war itself. Deemed a strategic area on the South coast, the town is placed in an exclusion zone, which isolates Burra from his friends. His medicines are rationed, and his mind turns to the cruelty of war. He assumes a darker outlook on life through the lens of surrealism, a kaleidoscope of horror influenced by Goya and Bosch, yet maintaining the eroticised plump round buttocks a consistent theme in his depiction of male figures from the sailors of Marseille to the Matadors of Madrid and then the soldiers of his war scenes, in these monumental works, Burra defies convention, elevating watercolour to the scale of mural. Men in uniform stab, crawl and groan over each other. Time seems warped, and the uniforms cross periods with soldiers donning Venetian masks.
After the war, Burra, now in his fifties, turns to theatre designing costumes and sets. The joyful satire of his early works vanishes, though his humour remains, albeit darker. Burra’s final works were comments on the plight of the countryside against modernisation, foreshadowing the climate crisis. He painted petrol stations, quarries and motorways splicing up Britain’s green and pleasant lands. In Cornish Clay Mines (1970), he jests with the viewer, one of the petrol pumps is labelled ‘Peeeee Superr’, a play on words recalling the pea soupers that killed thousands of people in London, the Great Smog of 1952 has been estimated to have caused 10,000 deaths. There’s a great morbid irony in this attack on the motorway and increasing traffic’s impact on the countryside, as to reach these landscapes he relied on them and never strayed far from the car, restricted by his worsening health.
An underappreciated artist who elevated watercolour to new heights and persisted with sharing his dark humour with the world despite his health, Edward Burra is on now at Tate Britain until 19 October 2025 and runs parallel with an exhibition of works by Ithell Colquhoun, offering visitors the chance to see two influential British artists with one ticket.
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