Papers, [ca.1860]-1942.

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Papers, [ca.1860]-1942.

Consists of a day book, diaries, an artists' notebook, three sketches, fourteen photographs of Burdick, and photographs of two of Burdick's paintings, a portrait of Calvin Coolidge and "The Madonna of the Apostles." The diaries cover the years 1914 to 1917, 1928, 1930, 1933, and 1934 and reveal that Burdick was a very active conservator of paintings in Boston and vicinity in the latter part of his career. In 1914, for example, he retouched spots in a portrait of Daniel Webster, by Gilbert Stuart and twenty years later, at the age of ninety, did some reframing. Most of his activities as a conservator focused on retouching, varnishing, and cleaning. Although in 1914 he remarked that he was "sick of varnishing painting," Burdick never gave up seeking work. In January of 1934, he applied for a job at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Burdick's career as a painter and his experiments with different media (monochrome, miniatures, wax colors and painted portraits from photographs) are also referred to in these diaries. In 1933, for instance, he remarked that he "painted in opaque water color on old yellow paper with fair success;" in 1914, he tried "painting postcards with little success." In addition, Burdick delivered talks on painting throughout his life and was an inveterate reader of historical and technical publications on art. Books he read are recorded in his diaries. Burdick also recorded attending lectures and exhibitions of both American and foreign artists at such places as the Fogg Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Vose Gallery. The artists' notebook contains recipes and instructions collected and copied by Burdick, including: guidelines for drawing leaves and trees with 16 original sketches; a piece entitled "The Art of Water Colour Drawing" from the Oxford drawing book; a recipe for fixing charcoal drawings; remarks on painting by an artist named Reynolds; "Portrait Painting in Water Color," by Mrs. Merrifield, "Painting Photographs in Water Colour," by W.P. Simour; a piece on tinting photographs; an article about etchings and glass; and 16 miscellaneous recipes, some in short hand.

7 v. + 16 photographic prints ; 33 cm. or smaller.

Information

SNAC Resource ID: 7155465

Winterthur Library

Related Entities

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Burdick, Horace Robbins, 1844-1942

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6t1629r (person)

Horace R. Burdick was a portrait painter, teacher, conservator, and writer. Born in East Killingly, Ct., he studied at the Lowell Institute and then the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School. He was a pupil of artists George Hollingsworth, William Rimmer, and E.O. Grundman. Burdick lived in Providence, R.I. for a period of time and worked at a photographic establishment where he first began to use crayon. He moved to Boston in 1864 and set up a studio. Soon after, he became a member of the Boston Ar...