May Blossom

When writing about another watercolour titled Cherry Trees, Winter, 1962-3 (sold in these Rooms on 21 June 2016, lot 128, for £242,500), Andrew Causey's description lends itself to the present work: 'The sense of menace ... stems also from the hallucinatory intensity of Burra's vision: ... swathes of cherry blossom seem to melt under his gaze, and the flowers in each case become a soft glutinous mass; this is not really a Surrealist metamorphosis because identity is not being changed, there is no use of symbol or metaphor. In Samuel Palmer's In a Shoreham Garden, where the fruit tree blossom is so dense that the underlying form is lost, the result is joyful, while with Burra life at its most burgeoning seems to become sickly through excess; something from which pleasure might be expected becomes distasteful' (A. Causey, op. cit., p. 76).

The Ditchley Foundation, established by philanthropist Sir David Wills in 1958 at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire, fosters international dialogue on global issues. Ditchley Park is a grand 18th-century mansion where, among many other significant meetings, Winston Churchill hosted US Presidential envoy Harry Hopkins during World War II to persuade him of the case for American military support. Today, The Ditchley Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan organisation whose mission is to renew democratic societies, states and alliances to sustain peace, freedom and the rule of law. It does this by convening a diverse range of international leaders from the public and private sectors to encourage frank conversations and strategic thinking across partisan divides on the urgent challenges of today and tomorrow.