Lot 337: Alexander Hohenlohe Burr (1835-1899)

Blind Man's Buff signed 'A-Burr.' (lower left) oil on canvas 301/2 x 44 7/8 in. (77.5 x 114 cm.) PROVENANCE The Right Hon. Lord Airedale. with Cooling Galleries, London. William Randolph Hearst. with the Hammer Galleries, New York. Florence C. Weiss; (+) Sotheby's Parke Bernet, 24 February 1983, lot 30, when acquired by the present owner. EXHIBITION London, Royal Academy, 1888, no. 754. Childhood in Victorian England, 1985, no. 15. Victorian Childhood, 1986, cat. pl. 11. Heatherley School of Fine Art: 150th Anniversary Exhibition, 1996, no. 42. The Defining Moment, 2000-1, no. 5. NOTES Blind Man's Buff was Burr's final entry at the Royal Academy, (he had exhibited almost yearly since 1860). This is fitting status for a picture which synthesises historical precedents and forms the crowning achievement of his artistic maturity. Building on the foundations provided by his tutor Robert Scott Lauder and the hugely influential David Wilkie (1785-1841), Burr presents a rustic vignette which yet demonstrates a studied compositional grace evoking the great Dutch masters. In this combination of accessibility - the virtue that Wilkie encouraged with his pictures of village life - and aesthetic strength Burr appealed to a wide audience, cultivating public enjoyment and critical acclaim. 'Blind Man's Buff', the childhood game which demands that the blindfolded party identify his divergent companions, has presented many artists with a potent visual metaphor. For artists of the French Rococo, such as Jean-Honor‚ Fragonard and Jean-Baptiste Pater, the subject provided a neat framework for lovers antics. Burr's precursor, however, was David Wilkie, whose depiction of the subject now hangs in the Royal Collection. Wilkie's Blind Man's Buff, 1812, is a large and ambitious panorama of figures that map out a pattern of movement around the blindfolded protagonist. This ingenious and almost Mannerist composition, wherein bodies tumble and squirm, marked a departure for Wilkie. For the first time he forwent models, working from his imagination (though his draughtsman's skill is still in evidence). The result is ambiguous and fascinating; critics were not quite sure how to place the picture, and compared it to Watteau. It is this mixture of construction and naturalism that Burr inherits, but his picture is on a much smaller scale than Wilkie's, and the presence of children negates the eroticism that shadows his predecessor's. Rather than a young man, Burr's blindfolded player is a grandfather, whose red cap, topped with the white cloth strip, perhaps purposely evokes Father Christmas. He appears to have risen from his armchair, which two children now grasp, delighted to be in possession of their grandfather's favoured seat. A young boy peers from behind the old man's coat-tails, and another enters the room from outside, rolling a hula-hoop. This sets up an interrelation of figures that communicate on different levels and cause our gaze to transfer from one to another - in much the same way as they do with the Wilkie. One of the most arresting figures, by virtue of her well-executed arms, is the girl who attempts to hide behind the vacated chair. There is something particularly graceful about her form, accentuated by the white dress and ribbon-tied shoes she wears. These introduce an element of femininity into a picture which could have seemed ribald, had not Burr devised these elegant rhythms of movement and gesture. For in the same way that our eye moves from person to person, we also note their expressions - the impish glee of the seated boy, the more tentative pleasure of the child who comes through the door. Like Wilkie, Burr's fracas takes place in a simple interior: the beamed front room of a cottage. Whilst Wilkie's party were completely shut off from the natural light, Burr's open door emphasises the benign character of his scene. It reveals a green and sunny garden, with a rustic fence. Objects scattered on the floor tell us that the 'buff' element of the game (the name derives from the victim's tendency to 'buffet' obstacles) has already taken effect. A chair has been tipped upside down, an apple rolled away from its source - a fruit basket - and an open book and random shoe lie untended. These minor incidences are vital within the edited composition, just as seemingly unrelated objects lend structure to Dutch still life. Burr achieved early success in both London and Edinburgh. His historical and domestic genre works were popular and he was employed to illustrate a volume of Robert Burns' poems, collaborating with recognised fellows of the Scottish Academy, at the age of twenty-two. (His acclaimed contribution, Logan Braes sold in Christie's Scottish sale, 31 October 2002). The Art Journal devoted a monograph to Burr in 1870, appraising him as an artist whose mastery of sentiment did justice to, and built upon, his country's artistic heritage.