27/09/2026
Forgotten Ulster Artist John McBurney and his final days at Glandore Avenue…
Towards the end of his life, the Belfast artist and designer John McBurney lived at his father’s
residence, 31 Glandore Avenue. The poet John Hewitt revered McBurney and appreciated his
“vigorous mind”, writing in 1977 of McBurney’s “burning interest in Art and Theatre” and how his
“lively wit stimulated discussion of the newest trends”, such as the New English Art Club and in
particular the works of Philip Wilson Steer and George Clausen, then considered adventurous
painters.
Born on 14th May 1877 into a working-class family, “He received”, as conveyed by his close
friend the Ulster author Forrest Reid, “the rudiments of an education at a National School, and
had run about the streets barefoot.” McBurney was later apprenticed as a damask designer,
attending night classes at the Government School of Design and after some success won a
scholarship to study at the South Kensington Art Schools in London for two years. On returning
to Belfast he worked as a designer. However, due to ill health and against the advice of his
doctor to go abroad, he remained at home working freelance.
McBurney was also heavily involved in the Belfast Arts Society and extremely active in the affairs
of the Ulster Literary Theatre and the Ulster Arts Club. Here he exhibited his works regularly and
was President in 1912 and 1913.
Forrest Reid was also an active member of the Ulster Arts Club and through their intimate
friendship dedicated his 1913 novel The Gentle Lover to McBurney. In his second autobiography
Private Road (1940), Reid describes him as “a man of extraordinary courage and personal
charm. Of all those I have ever met I think he had the nimblest wit and the most generous
nature. ”
In one letter addressed to Reid from 31 Glandore Ave on 11th January 1915, McBurney writes
with impassioned fervour of his frustration at Reid’s thoughtlessness by not joining him on a
night out after a meeting at the Ulster Arts Club, subsequently causing more hurt by then
heading off with another friend instead! “I have always believed that you do not mean to hurt
me, but the fact remains that you too often do. ” McBurney writes. The letter concludes, after a
detailed description of various dull venues and a wasted evening, arriving home at 3:00am
sober, with the heartfelt wish: “Surely it’s not too much to hope, as I do, that some day perhaps,
we may escape these misunderstandings and cross purposes. ” Further letters of a more caring
and concerned nature follow, which are held in Queen’s University’s Special Collections, giving
evidence of a turbulent yet loving friendship.
McBurney died of tuberculosis on 1st December 1917 aged 40. During that last winter at
Glandore Avenue, having been forbidden to have a fire lit, he sat in an ice-cold bedroom with the
window open as wide as it would go. Of that “vigorous mind” all that remains is a handful of
landscape paintings and a portrait in the Ulster Museum’s Collection. The paintings are never on
public display and seem to be locked away unloved and forgotten in storage.
John McBurney was a man who lived his short life to the full. As Reid states,
“His nature was
comprised of a curious blend of melancholy and gaiety, with an underlying pride that nothing
could shake. His health was wretched and he took no care of himself, yet right up to the end the
spirit was alert, whimsical, witty as ever, in the frail exhausted body. ” Here was an artist who
contributed to the emerging vibrant cultural life of Belfast at that time; a man who should not be
forgotten, a resident from the past whom Glandore will hold dear, not only embedded in the
memories of bricks and mortar, but in the very fibre and rhythm of all those who live there today
through a renewal of interest in McBurney and a resurgence of his creative spirit.
Article by Steven Andrew Irwin.
John McBurney- images copyright Queen's University, Belfast
