Artist: Louie Burrell about 1900-30Portrait of a Red-haired Girl
Louisa, or ‘Louie’ Burrell faced a series of setbacks in her career. She left London to work as a teacher in Truro, Cornwall, where she painted miniatures of local people to pay for her training at Bushey Art School. She was able to take up her place at the age of 27 and participated in life classes, a practice of drawing from a nude model usually denied to female artists.
After the sudden death of her husband in 1908, Burrell became a single mother and her health was often strained. Commissions halted after the outbreak of World War I, but she found new patrons through political and royal connections in Canada and the USA, and she later had some success in London. But a lack of work then followed, and a second marriage breakdown, which led the artist to travel to India in 1928, with her daughter, who sought a more prosperous life in the colonies.
Who is the Sitter?
The ‘Red-haired Girl’ portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1902 while Burrell was still a student, and it shows her remarkable talent. Tracking her work is a difficult feat as she spent much of her career overseas. The former V&A conservator Jim Murrell has observed that Burrell had ‘that quality which we recognise in the work of Holbein, Hoskins, and Cooper amongst the miniaturists’ and deemed her ‘the last great exponent of the English miniature’.
Relationship to Power
Burrell was commissioned by Lord Irwin (1881-1959), Viceory of India (1926-1931), and Field Marshall Sir William Birdwood (1865-1951). In Kashmir she painted Indian royalty. Despite the powerful connections afforded her by working in India, the Viceroy’s portrait took eighteen months to complete, and garnered less publicity than she had hoped. She returned to India again in 1932 but could not fulfil the commission by the new Viceroy, Lord Willingdon (1866-1951), due to poor health.