#MC36
Ca. 1911
Eight loose watercolours, including four large ones ca. 28x38 cm (11x15 in), one ca. 29x23 cm (11 ½ x 9 in) and three from ca. 17,5x25 cm (7 x 10 in) to ca. 14x22,5 cm (5 ½ x 8 ¾ in). Two watercolours with period pencil captions on verso. Four watercolours with needle holes in the corners after being mounted, several with old mount residue on verso, otherwise a very good collection of bright and sound watercolours.
Attractive collection of vivid watercolour views of Fiji, then a British Crown colony, created in 1911 by one “Lucy Burton” – possibly, a relative of Rev. John Wear Burton (1875-1970), a noted Methodist minister from New Zealand, who served as a missionary to the East Indian settlers on Fiji in 1902-1911 and published an illustrated account of his time there in 1910 (“The Fiji of Today,” London: Charles H. Kelly, 1910). The watercolours include two views of the harbour of the nation’s capital - Suva (one featuring a sailship and another - an ocean cruiser), a scene in Levuka (Ovalau Island) with native thatched-roof houses, a portrait of a Fijian man wearing a traditional grass skirt and necklace (likely, of carved whalebone), and four large views of a sugar plantation, a native boat, an outrigger canoe with a sail, and a coastal scene with a dugout canoe. Overall a nice collection of beautiful watercolours of Fiji and its people. A list of pencil captions on verso: Suva, Fiji, July 30, 1911; Levuka, Fiji, July 31, 1911.
John Wear Burton graduated from Prince Alfred Theological College (Auckland), Canterbury College (University of New Zealand), and the University of Melbourne. He served as a missionary in Fiji (1902-1911), Conference Foreign Mission Secretary (1914-24), Chief Religious Work Director with the Australian Y.M.C.A. (1918-1920), editor of “Missionary Review” (since 1922), President of the Methodist Conference of New South Wales, &c. (see more: Who is Who in Australia, 1938, pp. 103-104; Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 7, 1979).
