Lot 120: DENNIS EUGENE NORMAN BURTON B.1933

DENNIS EUGENE NORMAN BURTON B.1933 ABSTRACT COMPOSITION signed and dated middle right burton '59; signed, titled and dated by the artist on the reverse oil on masonite 121.9 by 91.4 cm. 48 by 36 in.

Joan Murray, Dennis Burton Retrospective, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, 1977, p. 18

Private Collection, Toronto

Burton was one of Jock Macdonald's pupils who, along wtih Graham Coughtry, Richard Gorman and Paul Fournier, among others, became a respected artist.

In 1959, the year this work was painted, Burton met the American artist Ben Shahn in New York who said to him, "leave commercial art and paint, paint, paint!" This had a lasting effect on Burton who left his job with the C.B.C. to become a full-time artist. This never before exhibited oil is from that heady time in his life.