Wicklow
Wicklow ( ; ga, Cill Mhantáin , meaning 'church of the toothless one'; non, Víkingaló) is the county town of County Wicklow in Ireland. It is located south of Dublin on the east coast of the island. According to the 2016 census, it has a ...
– 16 March 1900 in London) was an Irish painter who was born in County Wicklow and taken by his parents to live in
County Clare
County Clare ( ga, Contae an Chláir) is a county in Ireland, in the Southern Region and the province of Munster, bordered on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Clare County Council is the local authority. The county had a population of 118,81 ...
on the west coast of Ireland at the age of six. He was the third son of Samuel Frederick Burton and his wife, Hanna Mallett.
The old Burton seat was Clifden House,
High Sheriff of Clare
The High Sheriff of Clare was a High Sheriff title. Records show that the title was in existence from at least the late 16th century, though it is not used today in the modern Republic of Ireland. The title existed within County Clare in the west ...
in 1799, and his wife, Jane Blood of the nearby townland of Roxton, County Clare. Sir Frederick was the third director of the National Gallery, London.
Biography
Artistic career
Educated in
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...
, he was elected an associate of the
Royal Hibernian Academy
The Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) is an artist-based and artist-oriented institution in Ireland, founded in Dublin in 1823. Like many other Irish institutions, such as the RIA, the academy retained the word "Royal" after most of Ireland became in ...
at age 21, and an academician two years later. In 1842, he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy. A visit to Germany and
Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
in 1842 was the first of a long series of trips to various parts of Europe, which gave him a profound knowledge of the works of the Old Masters. From 1851, he spent 7 years working as a painter in the service of Maximilian II of Bavaria.
Burton worked with George Petrie on archaeological sketches and was on the council of the Royal Irish Academy and the Archaeological Society of Ireland.
He was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours in 1855, and a full member in the following year. He resigned in 1870, and was reelected as an honorary member in 1886. A
knighthood
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the ...
was conferred on him in 1884, and the degree of
LL.D.
Legum Doctor (Latin: “teacher of the laws”) (LL.D.) or, in English, Doctor of Laws, is a doctorate-level academic degree in law or an honorary degree, depending on the jurisdiction. The double “L” in the abbreviation refers to the early ...
of Dublin in 1889. In his youth he had strong sympathy with the
Young Ireland
Young Ireland ( ga, Éire Óg, ) was a political and cultural movement in the 1840s committed to an all-Ireland struggle for independence and democratic reform. Grouped around the Dublin weekly ''The Nation'', it took issue with the compromise ...
Party. He died in Kensington, west London and is buried in
Mount Jerome Cemetery
Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest.
Mount or Mounts may also refer to:
Places
* Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England
* Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, C ...
, Dublin.
Burton's best-known watercolours, ''The Aran Fisherman's Drowned Child'' (1841) and '' The Meeting on the Turret Stairs'' (1864; also known as ''Hellelil and Hildebrand'') are in the
National Gallery of Ireland
The National Gallery of Ireland ( ga, Gailearaí Náisiúnta na hÉireann) houses the national collection of Irish and European art. It is located in the centre of Dublin with one entrance on Merrion Square, beside Leinster House, and another on ...
. Meeting on the Turret Stairs was voted by the Irish public as Ireland's favourite painting in 2012 from among 10 works shortlisted by critics.
Directorship of the National Gallery
In 1874 Burton was appointed director of the
National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...
, London, in succession to Sir
William Boxall
Sir William Boxall (29 June 1800 – 6 December 1879) was an English painter and museum director.
Early life and education
He was born at Oxford on 29 June 1800, and baptised 29 July at St Michael's Church, Oxford, to Thomas Boxall (d. 1847) ...
. In June 1874, he obtained a special grant to acquire the art collection of Alexander Barker, which included
Piero della Francesca
Piero della Francesca (, also , ; – 12 October 1492), originally named Piero di Benedetto, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. To contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca i ...
's ''Nativity'' and Botticelli's '' Venus and Mars''. In 1876 a bequest of 94 paintings, mainly by Dutch artists but also including works by Pollaiuolo, Bouts and
Canaletto
Giovanni Antonio Canal (18 October 1697 – 19 April 1768), commonly known as Canaletto (), was an Italian painter from the Republic of Venice, considered an important member of the 18th-century Venetian school.
Painter of city views or ...
, was made by the haberdasher
Wynne Ellis
Wynne Ellis (also Wynn Ellis) (1790–1875) was a wealthy British haberdasher, politician and art collector.
Biography
Ellis, son of Thomas Ellis, by Elizabeth Ordway of Barkway, Hertfordshire, was born at Oundle, Northamptonshire, in July 1790, ...
. Also in this year an extension to the Gallery by
E. M. Barry
Edward Middleton Barry RA (7 June 1830 – 27 January 1880) was an English architect of the 19th century.
Biography
Edward Barry was the third son of Sir Charles Barry, born in his father's house, 27 Foley Place, London. In infancy he was ...
was completed. pp. 86–87
During the twenty years that he held this post he was responsible for many important purchases, among them
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...
's ''
Virgin of the Rocks
The ''Virgin of the Rocks'' ( it, Vergine delle rocce), sometimes the ''Madonna of the Rocks'', is the name of two paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, of the same subject, with a composition which is identical except fo ...
'',
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual a ...
's ''Ansidei Madonna'', Anthony van Dyck's ''Equestrian portrait of Charles I'', Hans Holbein the Younger's ''Ambassadors'', and the ''Admiral Pulido Pareja'', by Diego Velázquez (this subsequently attributed to Velázquez's assistant
Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo
Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo (c.1612 – February 10, 1667)
was a Spanish Baroque portrait and landscape painter, the most distinguished of the followers of his father-in-law Velázquez, whose style he imitated more closely than did any o ...
). He also added to the noted series of Early Italian pictures in the gallery. The number of acquisitions made to the collection during his period of office amounts to more than 500.
Exhibitions
In the National Gallery of Ireland an exhibition of Burton's work ran from 25 October 2017 to 14 January 2018.
Influence
Irish artist Joe Caslin's mural during the 2015 marriage equality campaign in Ireland directly referenced Frederic William Burton’s ''The Meeting on the Turret Stairs'', one of the National Gallery of Ireland’s most celebrated works.