Watercolour over pencil on paper, 56 by 76cm (22 by 30 in)

Provenance: Lefevre Gallery, London; Private Collection, London; Sale, Sotheby's London, 11 May 1988, lot 144; Crane Kalman Gallery, London, where acquired by the family of the present owner, April 2008, and thence by descent

Exhibited: London, Crane Kalman Gallery, A Selection of Paintings, April 2008

Literature: Andrew Causey, Edward Burra: Complete Catalogue, Phaidon, London, illustrated no. 216a

Boats and Rocks is a fine example of Burra’s 1950s work, a dream-like seascape loosely based around the coast near his hometown in Rye but ultimately a product of his uniquely strange and fertile imagination. The Burra expert Jane Stevenson has written of this work: “Painted in 1952, the execution of Boats and Rocks contrasts with Burra’s earlier works, which are painted tightly, with a matte finish and opaqueness, feeling similar in many ways to tempera. Here Burra uses the watercolour medium to an entirely different effect - he utilizes the swirling diffusion, the blurring of boundaries, to encourage the prevailing sense of the uncanny and strange.”