The David Burton Story:
The War Time Screever!
Written by Dan Carrier; Edited with additional material by Philip Battle
Most of the distinctive work by talented artist David Burton was left to be trampled under foot.
DAVID Burton spent most of his adult life working outdoors on his hands and knees. He was half-blind, having been born without sight in one eye, yet managed to scrape a living chalking pictures on the pavements of Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead.
But he also painted watercolours, thanks to a remarkable patron who recognised his talent while out visiting the sculptor Henry Moore, and now the story of the down and out pavement artist and high-society art dealer can now be revealed amost 67 years after his death.
Burton’s art would disappear after rainfall or be worn out by people’s shoes. But Lucy Wertheim, one the 1930s’ art scene’s best known gallery owners, thought it should be preserved. A commercial art gallery dealer in London and Manchester between 1930 and 1939, she was a founder of the Twenties Group of artists which included Maxwell Bates and Christopher Wood (Liverpool Connection), and used to buy pictures by LS Lowry for 10 shillings a time to give away as Christmas presents. A patron of Moore, who lived in Parkhill Road, Belsize Park, Mrs Wertheim of St Mark’s Square, Primrose Hill, would pass Burton drawing on Rosslyn Hill as she went to visit the sculptor in his studio. She liked his work so much she took him under her wing and encouraged him to paint watercolours.
3rd February 1945: Pavement artist David Burton working on one of his naive pieces in London’s Swiss Cottage. Original Publication: PICTURE POST – The Hampstead Primitive – pub – 1945 (Photo by Kurt Hutton)
The pavement artist – or ‘screever’ – as they were called, were a feature of 1930s London. They had regular pitches and would get to know the people who would tip them for their efforts.
In George Orwell’s work on poverty in the inter-war years, Down and Out in London and Paris, he dedicates a section to Bozo, a star-gazing pavement artist he befriends on the South Bank, who worked the same pitches as Burton. Orwell writes: “Screevers can sometimes be called artists, sometimes not. Bozo introduced me to one who was a real artist – that is, he had studied art in Paris and submitted pictures to the salon in his day. His line was copies of Old Masters which he did marvellously, considering he was drawing on stone.”
3rd February 1945: Pavement artist David Burton working on one of his naive pieces in London’s Swiss Cottage. Original Publication: PICTURE POST – The Hampstead Primitive – pub – 1945 (Photo by Kurt Hutton)
Although Burton had no formal training, his pictures impressed Mrs Wertheim so much she gave him an allowance of 10 shillings a week and in return he painted her more than 160 watercolours. In her autobiography Adventure In Art, Mrs Wertheim writes: “Burton and I became great friends through my appreciation of his work. He had a pitch at Hampstead and told me how he came in the first place to make my acquaintance. It seemed more than one passer-by told him he should take his paintings to Mrs Wertheim. ‘She would like them,’ they had said – And finally he plucked up the courage and brought them to my gallery. From that time onwards I paid him a weekly sum, and promised him a show as soon as it could be arranged. I possess a most entertaining correspondence from him which one day I hope to publish. In spite of his numerous admirers, David Burton remains an artist’s artist, and I have given away far more of his paintings than I have sold.”
Mrs Wertheim’s granddaughter Lucilla Garner, who lives in Hampstead and still owns some of Burton’s works, remembers her grandmother’s generosity towards the artist. She said: “She was passionate, committed, intuitive, single minded and very generous when it came to art and her attitude towards artists – She felt it was her duty to support them. With David, she wanted to let the public know of his works, and was never motivated by the commercial aspects of running her own gallery.”
She would give pictures away if she thought it would help promote the artist – and handed over originals to anyone who was interested, including Prince Charles. Mrs Garner continued: “If she put on a show that was not having a good response, if somebody came in and was enthusiastic, she’d often give them a picture rather than try and sell one.”
But despite her patronage, Burton was not well. Like so many of his generation, he had been affected by his experiences in the First World War and his health was badly hit by the years of living in poverty. The Depression reduced his income to just a few pennies each day – and Mrs Werthiem’s intervention saved his life. Before the 1938 show, she told friends his pictures of stories from newspapers, animals and historical events were the best by a self-taught artist to be exhibited at her gallery. He arrived at the private view unshaven and without a tie and had to be lent a suit for the opening.
David Burton naive art
But the success did not take him away from the life on the street – he told Mrs Wertheim that the best pitches had gone down in value and lamented concrete replacing Bath Stone, as “you can’t get a good surface to crayon on”.
Born in 1883, he was one of five sons to be a soldier who also had an eye for art. His father’s mezzotints – a form of printmaking – of the 1857 Indian Mutiny inspired Burton to draw as a child. He worked for a printer in the Sheerness shipyards but his attempts to learn a trade were interrupted by the Great War. He joined the Kings Royal Rifles, a regiment who fought at Loos, Mons and Passchendaele. After being demobbed, Burton worked for the Great Western Railway and then on the Underground – but it ended when he was badly burnt. He told friends, “I was boiling some wax when it exploded.” But it was this accident that ignited the artist inside him. During a long convalescence he rediscovered painting and he turned to the pavements for a canvas by the mid-1920s.
JAIMAICA BANNANAS: watercolour on paper by David Burton 1941
Mrs Wertheim wrote: “An American who came to the private view told me he was sailing for New York the following day and prevailed on me to let him take back with him one of the most outstanding pictures in the show to give to a friend in the States who had a collection of naïve paintings. He added that if I would arrange an exhibition in New York, it would be a success.”
It was a show that never went ahead, partly because of the Second World War. But Burton’s art continued to be enjoyed by people promenading up and down Rosslyn Hill until his death, aged 62, in 1945 in Camden Town’s Rowton House, a hostel for down-and-outs in Arlington Road, London.
THE LIBERATION OF HOLLAND by David Burton- 1945 poster paint on paper
Additional: There is clear evidence that David Burton continued practicing his pavement art throughout World War II in London and that he worked pavement art pitches in Manchester City Centre. Lucy Wertheim also arranged exhibitions of Burtons work in her Manchester Gallery during this time.
VE day (Victory in Europe) was declared on the 8th May 1945 and the above film was produced only a few weeks later on the 25th May 1945. The photos I’ve included in this blog show Burton working the pavement well before the end of the war in February 1945. It’s quite remarkable to see a 62 year old man producing pavement art in the middle of winter. The patronage of Lucy Wertheim attracted the interest of British Pathé News and this film clearly shows David Burton drawing next to the statue of a lion in Trafalgar Square watched by men in uniform and exhibiting his work in The Charlotte Street Centre, London W1.
Although this was produced and shown in cinemas after the war the actual filming of Burton at work and his exhibition was done in July 1944. It’s a unique insight to the world of a British War-time screever!
Lucy Wertheim also makes an appearence in this film!
Burton died only a few months after this was made…….
Research tells me that Burton was not alone as a war-time pavement artist and the British screeving community, rather than dying out took an interesting and surprising turn….I’ll be dealing with that in a future blog! 😉
adapted from an article originally published in The Camdan New Journal; in support of an exhibition of Burtons work at the Duncan Campbell Fine Art Gallery, Kensington Square, London (4th March 2005)
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