Henry Burn
Henry Burn (* around 1807 in Birmingham , West Midlands ; † October 26, 1884 in Melbourne , Victoria ) was an English painter, draftsman and lithographer who worked in England until 1853 and then in Australia .
biography
In England
Not much is known of the Henry Burns family. The father, Samuel Burn, is said to have been a varnish maker. The mother's maiden name was Hannah Oliver . - As he himself states, Henry Burn received his training from an art and drawing teacher. Further details are missing, but it is very likely that this teacher was the painter Samuel Lines (1778–1863), who founded his own drawing school in Birmingham in 1807, where Henry Burn will certainly have learned at some point. (Samuel Lines co-founded two other institutions in Birmingham: the (Royal) Birmingham Society of Artists in 1821 and the Birmingham School of Art in 1843.)
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After his training, Henry Burn was involved in a wide variety of jobs and occasionally stepped out. In 1830 he exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and in 1832 and 1850 at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. By his own testimony, he has also given drawing lessons at schools in Leamington and the wider Warwickshire area. As a draftsman, Henry Burn was undoubtedly highly gifted and some of his work has been reproduced for typographical reproduction by other artists, such as a view of St Mary's church in Birmingham from an 1842 engraving.
From 1840 to 1852 Henry Burn drew and lithographed views ( vedute ) of English cities , all of which have been published. To do this, he traveled through the country and over time visited the cities of Bournemouth (1840), Blandford (undated), Weymouth (1842), Wolverhampton (1844), Walsall (1845), Birmingham (1845), Nottingham (1846), Derby (1846), Leeds (1846), Halifax (1847), Shrewsbury (1847), Worcester (undated), Northampton (undated), Leicester (undated) and Winchester (1852).
On October 16, 1853, a second phase of life began for Henry Burn when he left England on board a sailing ship from Liverpool to start a new life in Australia.
In Australia
On January 30, 1854, Henry Burn reached Melbourne, the capital of the Australian state of Victoria, where he worked from then on. In the first years he drew and lithographed sheets with views of the local conditions in and around Melbourne. In order to get buyers for his pictures, he advertised in newspapers such as the Argus on December 19, 1853 . (In the library of La Trobe University some lithographs from Melbourne from this period are kept: Melbourne from the South, near the St. Kilda Road [June 1855], Melbourne from the North near the road to Mount Alexander [September 1855], Panorama View of the City of Melbourne taken from the South Bank of the Yarra [May 1856] and Melbourne looking North from Prince's Bridge [1862] as well as portraits of the Irish actor Gustavus Vaughan Brooke [1818–1866] and the English politician Henry Barkly [1815–1898], which were created after daguerreotypes in 1857.)
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On July 3, 1860, Henry Burn married Susan Cane at St. Peter's Church in East Melbourne. The bride's family was from London and had come to Australia on the same ship with Burn. There were no children from this marriage.
Henry Burn's first public exhibition in Australia was in 1857 in the Victorian Society of Fine Arts. After that there were further exhibitions in the years 1870, 1872, 1876 and 1877 in the Victorian Academy of Arts.
After 1860, Henry Burn created a number of watercolors and oil paintings, the motifs of which he also found in Melbourne and the surrounding area. One of his most important works of this and in general is certainly the oil painting Melbourne from Wellington Parade from 1872, the light of which is determined by a late afternoon sun and conveys a special feeling. With this work, Henry Burn has certainly come closest to his art.
Henry Burn's life took on a certain tragedy in the autumn of 1877 when he could no longer provide for himself and his family and had to seek refuge in the Benevolent Asylum in Melbourne. He died there in October 1884 and was buried in Melbourne General Cemetery .
literature
- Joan A. Kerr: The Dictionary of Australien Artists: Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870 , Oxford University Press, Sydney 1992
- Edward Saunders: Joseph Pickford of Derby: A Georgian architect , Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd, Phoenix Mill Far Thrupp Stroud Gloucestershire 1993, ISBN 0-7509-0380-5
Web links
- Literature by and about Henry Burn in the WorldCat bibliographic database
- An English article by Patricia Reynolds about Henry Burn
Remarks
- ↑ The best illustration of St Mary's chapel was engraved from a drawing of 1842 by Henry Burn. Edward Saunders' judgment that the best illustration of St Mary was engraved from a drawing by Henry Burn in 1842, in Joseph Pickford of Derby: A Georgian architect (1993) at page 122. (The church is 1773/74 by the architect Joseph Pickford .)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Burn, Henry |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Burn, H. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English painter, draftsman and lithographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1807 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Birmingham |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 26, 1884 |
| Place of death | Melbourne |