George Brainerd Burr
American, 1876-1939
“Woman by the Fireplace”
Oil on canvas; 25 x 20 inches
George Brainerd Burr was born in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1876, the son of a prominent and successful banker. After his education there, he traveled to Berlin in Germany to study architecture and later figure and landscape painting at the Berlin Academy. After several years in Germany and the Low Countries, Burr and his wife, Lucretia Phinney lived near Volendam, Holland, spending their winters on the Island of Capri off the southern coast of Italy. In Paris, Burr met and viewed the work of Claude Monet who exerted a profound influence on the younger American painter. Burr eventually returned to the United States after this fourteen-year education where he studied painting and etching at the Art Students League in New York City.
After a move to Old Lyme, Connecticut, the Burrs purchased a large cottage in the center of the village, near its group of influential and collegial American painters. Burr joined the Lyme Art Association and became an important member of the Old Lyme Art Colony.