Travellers by a well
(c. 1635-1641)

• Andries BOTH

After artistic training in their native Utrecht, Andries Both and his brother Jan travelled to Italy in the early 1630s. They established themselves in Rome painting bambocciate, a new genre being developed there by Dutch, French, Flemish and German artists. Bambocciate were small cabinet pictures of ‘low’ life in the Roman Campagna, painted with Northern realism and infused with recognisably Italian light. The amusing and rustic character of these simple vignettes was relished by Roman aristocratic and bourgeois collectors. This particular scene, showing travellers paused for refreshment, might well have been observed during the Both brothers’ journeys.

[1] Burmeister is buried at West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide. He was the son of Charles Frederick Burmeister (1857–1941), a tenor, and Marion Maude Burmeister (1868–1932, nee Killicoat). His grandfather was Heinrich Wilhelm Burmeister (1818–1907), a German pioneer who arrived in the 1840s, not long after the Colony of South Australia was founded (1836). From the obituary, H.W. Burmeister made his fortune on the Victorian goldfields before returning to Adelaide to pursue a trade as a mason. He made regular trips to Europe in the late nineteenth century. After his death, his will was contested by his estranged children and his widow. The ensuing probate dispute (June – July 1908) was covered extensively by local newspapers.

[2] Objects from the bequest were deemed unsuitable for the Art Gallery of South Australia (then known as National Gallery of South Australia) and, with the agreement of the family (possibly sister Daisy Maud Salotti, nee Burmeister, d. 1970), were sold at auction. Some pictures were retained including a Flemish wood panel painting; a portrait of Louis XIV, and Quayside, by Frances Hodgkins. See Bulletin of the National Gallery of South Australia, vol. 18, no. 4, 1957.

[3] Proceeds from the sale formed AGSA’s VK Burmeister Bequest Fund and used for acquisitions. The sale catalogue contains very few details and descriptions of lots. The Both painting could be Lot 1, Dutch Oil; Lot 7, Small oil on Wood, or; Lot 76, Dutch School.