{"id":9655,"date":"2015-06-29T11:43:21","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T11:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.britishportraits.org.uk\/?page_id=9655"},"modified":"2018-04-20T15:23:44","modified_gmt":"2018-04-20T15:23:44","slug":"chris-burton","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.britishportraits.org.uk\/resources\/bursaries\/chris-burton\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Burton, Exhibitions and Collection Assistant, Orleans House Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"
My initial scope was to research the attribution for the portrait of Sir Richard Francis Burton, in Arab dress depicted on his pilgrimage to Mecca.<\/p>\n
The Burton portrait in question is immensely popular with general visitors, researchers and people engaged with our education programme. Unfortunately, the work lacks a firm artist\u2019s attribution and this is what we set out to investigate over the course of the project.<\/p>\n
From initial research using our gallery records, we discovered that the attribution for the painting has been unclear for many years, with different artists names mentioned on the back of the picture, inventory, card index, modes records.<\/p>\n
Our main purpose of the research was to find out how the previous attributions had been determined. The portrait in question, part of the Richmond Borough Art Collection, has been on loan from Southwark since 1969 and was originally donated by Isabel Burton to the nation as a gift following the death of her husband Sir Richard Burton. When it came into the Richmond Borough Art Collection it was originally attributed to artist Albert Letchford. Letchford was selected by the Burtons to paint a number of views in their last consular post Trieste. It may well have been assumed that this portrait of Burton was also by Letchford because of this connection. However, in the list which Isabel wrote of the works she donated the picture is listed as being by Borgo Caratti and research undertaken led to the attribution being changed at that time.<\/p>\n
We searched through archive material to pinpoint when the attribution had changed from Lechford to Caratti. We found that in Isabel Burton\u2019s inventory of Burtons personal effects (originally donated to the Public Library at Camberwell) there was reference in Penzer bibliography of Burton 1923 which states that Borgo Caratti is the artist of the work, clearly separate from the list of paintings by Letchford and this evidence formed the basis of the reattribution.<\/p>\n
However, our research into Borgo Caratti didn\u2019t provide a conclusive answer as it’s unclear which Borgo Caratti it might be and evidence at the Witt Library showed that one Borgo Caratti was an Italian theatre scenery painter with no apparent link to Burton. As part of this research we wanted to explore the different versions of the picture of Burton in Arab dress to try to ascertain its origins and attribution and this led us to research other possible artists that Burton was associated with to see if we could find, or discount, potential artists.<\/p>\n
We researched five different artists associated with Burton; Albert Letchford, Louis William Desanges Edward Lear, Thomas Seddon, and librarian and copyist Herbert Oakes Jones. We visited a number of archives to try to establish archival references to our portrait and also to compare the stylistic qualities of aforementioned artists, visiting the Heinz Archive at the National Portrait Gallery, Royal Anthropological Institute, Witt Library as well as investigating original documents and correspondence held at Orleans House Gallery and Richmond Local Studies collection.\u00a0 Whilst we found interesting material relating to the artists, and the history behind this particular image of Burton, we could not find sufficient evidence on whichto to base a re-attribution.<\/p>\n