Description
Sidney Burrard was born on the Isle of Wight and in April 1887 married Miss Gertrude Ellen Haig, elder daughter of Major-General C. T. Haig, R.E., who was at that time Superintendent of the Trigonometrical Survey. General Haig was of the family of the Haigs of Bemersyde. Field-Marshal Lord Haig was the son of his first cousin.
Gertrude accompanied her husband, an Indian Army officer, throughout the Indian subcontinent during his tenure as Superintendent of the Trigonometrical Survey of India. As an amateur artist, she recorded the people and places that she encountered and exhibited her paintings for many years in India.
Preface To Catalogue written by Sidney G Burrard, August 1929.
Published: An Amateur Artist in India “A Collection of Paintings by Gertrude Lady Burrard.” Country Life Ltd, 20 Tavistock Street, London W.C.2 1929.
The Catalogue is not included in the sale.
lady Burrard’s paintings have been such a continual source of pleasure to her family that I have prepared this collection of reproductions for her children and grandchildren as a memorial of her work. The collection is sadly incomplete. She painted mostly in oils, and oil paintings are more difficult to house or to preserve than water colours. Some of her pictures were given away, some were sold at Exhibitions in India, others were damaged or lost on steamer voyages ; thus, it has come about that many of her oil paintings of Indian subjects are not now available for this collection.
Young artists like to sell their pictures ; they regard selling as a sign of success. My wife used to say, when she was young : ” Let us sell what we can. I shall have plenty of time for painting when we retire.” But at the age of forty-six she became incapacitated by rheumatism, and her painting was brought to an end. Like most amateurs, she never possessed a studio nor a properly lighted room. Her portraits were either painted in her drawing-room or out of doors.
The photographs for this collection were mostly taken by her son-in-law, Captain Dashwood, who understands the photography of colours and to whom the task was a labour of love. The costs of printing were defrayed from the prize moneys which the artist had won at public Exhibitions.
