words Edel Cassidy
Frederic William Burton (1816–1900) is an artist held in special esteem by the National Gallery of Ireland and its visitors. Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs is one of the Gallery’s best-loved works. It was voted by the Irish public as Ireland’s favourite painting in 2012 from among ten works shortlisted by critics. Part of its special status at the Gallery lies with the unusual conditions for viewing it: installed in its own cabinet, the doors are opened only four times a week for an hour at a time. Keeping it otherwise in darkness has helped preserve its luminosity and exquisite colours. The restricted access to it has also heightened its mystique. Burton, who worked almost exclusively on paper, was not limited to this one artwork and the Gallery is fortunate in possessing large holdings of his works.
Burton was born in April 1816 and his early years were spent in County Clare. Clifden House, Corofin, was the seat of the Burton family from the late eighteenth into the nineteenth century. They were High Sheriffs and Justices of the Peace in the county. His childhood was plagued by ill health and he also suffered an injury to his right arm that resulted in his painting with his left hand.
Encouraged by his father, Burton undertook artistic training in Dublin and became an associate member of the RHA in 1837, at the age of twenty-one, and a full member two years later. His reputation for fine modelling in pen, ink and chalks, combined with his delicate brushwork in watercolour on ivory and paper, ensured his early success as a miniaturist and portrait painter.
He was spotted by the topographical artist, antiquarian and music collector George Petrie, when copying a painting in a Dublin gallery. The two men became very friendly and Petrie influenced Burton’s mind and art for a time. Between 1839 and 1841 Burton visited the west of Ireland with Petrie and became captivated by the people and wild landscape of Connemara.
In the early 1840s, Frederic William Burton travelled to Germany for a prolonged stay. He based himself mainly in Munich and also spent a year in the medieval city of Nuremberg. A fluent German speaker, he mixed in artistic circles and was a member of the Munich Art Association. His travels in Bavaria, the Austrian Tyrol and other European countries are recorded in his watercolours. His sketches and paintings of local people and the Alpine landscapes inspired the colourful paintings he created and exhibited to great acclaim over the following decade. Burton was profoundly influenced by his European experience. The time he spent studying the collections and developing a familiarity with great art in public and private collections proved beneficial to his later career in London.
Moving to London in 1858, he came in contact with the Pre-Raphaelite circle, notably Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and Ford Madox Brown. He drew inspiration from their approach to painting and was interested in their preoccupation with beauty and with storytelling inspired by literary, religious and medieval subjects. He joined organisations such as the Hogarth Club, founded by Rossetti and Madox Brown. In 1865 he purchased Rossetti’s Salutation of Beatrice, revealing his strong admiration for the poet and artist.
In 1868, Frederic William Burton was commissioned to paint the portrait of Miss Mary Palliser of Comeragh House, County Waterford, during which they became betrothed. He was not wealthy at the time, and it appears that he decided to postpone marriage plans until his financial circumstances changed. His brothers, Edward and Rev. Robert Burton, both died young and the artist undertook to fund the education of Robert’s many children. One of these children, Isabella Julia (Burton) Gifford was to be the mother of the artist Grace Gifford, who married Joseph Plunkett before he was executed in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising. Burton and Mary never married, and she died of pneumonia in 1879.
In 1874, at the age of fifty-eight, Frederic William Burton was offered the Directorship of the National Gallery, London, by Prime Minister Gladstone. On his appointment he ceased painting and dedicated himself to running Britain’s premier public art gallery. He oversaw extensions to the building on Trafalgar Square, improved public access, lent paintings to museums around the country and began a campaign to glaze all works. In 1889 he published an updated catalogue of the collection. Between 1874 and 1894, he acquired over 500 paintings. He is celebrated for important acquisitions including Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks, Raphael’s Ansidei Madonna, Botticelli’s Venus and Mars, Anthony van Dyck’s Equestrian Portrait of Charles V, Diego Velázquez’s Philip IV of Spain, and Hans Holbein’s Ambassadors.
A Venetian Courtesan 1873–1874. Watercolour, gouache, black chalk, pastel and graphite on paper. Burton’s richly coloured final painting displays an affinity with Venetian Renaissance painting which also inspired the later work of the Pre-Raphaelites. Burton’s emphasis on the angel-wing style puffed sleeve recalls paintings by Titian and Veronese. According to Sir Walter Armstrong, former director of the National Gallery of Ireland, Burton was working on this painting when he received Gladstone’s offer of the Directorship of the National Gallery, London.
His interest in Ireland remained strong, including his friendship with Lady Gregory. When gifting her some early drawings that he made in Connemara and Clare, he remarked nostalgically that ‘the sketches of that happy time are in your keeping’. In 1900, during his final illness, he told Lady Gregory, ‘My best joys have been connected with Ireland.’ He died on 16 March 1900 and his remains were returned from London, as he wished, to be buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.
His life and work were commemorated in an exhibition in 1900 in the National Gallery of Ireland, organised by Director Sir Walter Armstrong, his nephew Henry Bindon Burton and his lifelong friend, Margaret Stokes. Yet within a few years of his death, Burton’s contributions as an artist faded into obscurity.
A major exhibition of his work, curated by Marie Bourke in 2017, and Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs being declared Ireland’s favourite painting in 2012, has encouraged a fresh appreciation of this outstanding master.
The National Gallery of Ireland and the Irish people are indebted to Margaret Stokes and Annie Callwell for leaving the Gallery many of Burton’s important paintings. Some of Burton’s descendants have also gifted works that have strengthened the Gallery’s holdings. Here are featured just some of the highlights of the collection at the National Gallery of Ireland.
The subject is taken from a medieval Danish ballad translated by Burton’s friend Whitley Stokes in 1855, which tells the story of Hellelil, who fell in love with her personal guard Hildebrand. Her father disapproved of the relationship and ordered her seven brothers to kill Hildebrand who, when attacked, kills six of them. Hellelil intervenes to save her youngest brother, who then imprisons her, tortures her and sells her into slavery, and Hildebrand dies of his wounds. The painting depicts a moment when the couple meet fleetingly on the stairs, as Hildebrand passionately seizes Hellelil’s arm and embraces it. In the words of George Eliot, ‘The face of the knight is the face of a man to whom the kiss is a sacrament.’ Burton’s watercolour reflects the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites in its rich colour and romanticism. Hellelil’s deep blue dress colour and slightly curved torso are clearly reminiscent of Millais’ Mariana (1851). Whitley Stokes’ sister, Margaret, bequeathed the painting to the National Gallery Ireland in 1900. It was voted by the Irish public as Ireland’s favourite painting in 2012.
Helen Faucit (subsequently Lady Martin) (1817-1898), Actress c.1845 Watercolour on paper. In 1845, actress Helen Faucit’s Dublin performance as Antigone in Sophocles’ Greek tragedy of the same name was hailed as a tour de force in Irish theatrical circles. Like many of his compatriots, Burton was captivated by Faucit’s beauty and intelligence. He portrayed her as Sophocles’ heroine, wearing a Greek chiton, her costume in the play. In 1851 Faucit married Sir Theodore Martin, biographer of Prince Albert, who commissioned this likeness. In later years the couple became close friends with Burton.
- ‘Frederic William Burton’ is published in Anthology Volume 15. Read more features from this volume or buy it now.
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