Details

Object type

sculpture

Title

Head of an infant

Artist/Maker

Thomas Stuart Burnett

Culture/School

Scottish

Place Associated

Scotland, Edinburgh (place made)

Date

1885

Materials

marble

Dimensions

height 275 mm

Description

A bust of Rosemary ('Rose') Stuart Burnett, the eldest daughter of sculptor Thomas Stuart Burnett, born 14 May 1883. A tender and intimate portrait, Rose turns as though in response to her father, an open, enquiring expression on her face. He lovingly depicts the short curls on the top of her head, her round cheeks and her shirt open at the neck. Oliver Johnston described Burnett’s ‘great pleasure, and consequent power, in reproducing the surface of flesh in infancy, youth, and old age.’ The first plaster version dates to 1884 and the marble was completed in 1885 and signed 'T. STUART BURNETT, ARSA 1885'. Poignantly Burnett was to die before his daughter's fifth birthday.

Born in Edinburgh in 1853 to a lithographic printer, Burnett was apprenticed to sculptor William Brodie and attended the School of the Board of Trustees in the evenings, gaining a national gold medal in 1875 for his figure of Antinous studied from the antique. He entered the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) Life School in Edinburgh at the end of 1875, there winning the Stuart Prize in 1880 for his figure group Eugene Aram. In 1878 he left Brodie’s studio and set up his own sculpture practice in Edinburgh. A trip to Paris and Florence in 1881 was influential.

Burnett is well known for his marble busts and genre subjects. Most famously he designed the figures of Effie Deans, Davie Deans and The White Lady of Avenel for the Scott Monument in Edinburgh (1882), a life-size sculpture of Rob Roy (1883-85) and bronze statues of Robinson Crusoe in Lower Largo, Fife (1885) and General Gordon in Aberdeen (1888). He exhibited at the RA in London from 1875, RSA from 1870 and Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts from 1873. He was elected an Associate of the RSA in 1883. His early death in 1888 at the age of 35 halted a promising career. His patron the MP Mr Aird, felt his loss personally, describing him as having ‘a quiet, unobtrusive charm’ and being a sculptor of ‘the first rank’: ‘the vigour of his work was always associated with calm repose, and this combination makes sculpture so beautiful to live with’ (Oliver S. Johnston, ‘Thomas Stuart Burnett, A.R.S.A’, Art and Literature, vol. 1, 1888, pp. 74-76.).

This bust was exhibited posthumously at the 1888 International Exhibition in Glasgow (no. 1513) and was purchased by the Executive Committee of the Exhibition for £40 and gifted to the Corporation of Glasgow. Its purchase may have been in tribute to Burnett and to assist his widow and three children left in need at his death, as were purchases by the RSA and the Royal Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland in that year. The City lent the bust for exhibition at the RSA in 1916 (no. 41).

Credit Line/Donor

Purchased from Glasgow International Exhibition, 1888 and presented by the Exhibition Association

ID Number

S.50

Location

In storage