Anita Willets-Burnham
“Abroad with a Paint Box and a Family of Six”
1921-1922

It all began with an apple orchard…or was it a friend’s words, as she departed for the Continent, “Why don’t you come on over? It’s wonderful! Flowers and cathedrals and antique markets everywhere! All for a song! And cauliflower only three cents a head!”

It took a little ingenuity – renting the family’s Log House, persuading husband Alfred to leave his salaried job – but Anita Willets-Burnham, then forty and with a nine-month-old baby, found a way to mobilize her family of six and cross “the pond.”

Taking up residence in Poissy, France for the first summer, the family established a rhythm of daily sketching and painting, combined with sightseeing and bargain-hunting, that would continue throughout their travels. Willets-Burnham taught her children the discipline of quick artistic studies she had learned from the celebrated American Impressionist William Merritt Chase, as well as producing an astonishing number of paintings herself.

After a short trip to London the family settled near Paris, where a governess was found for the younger children, leaving Willets-Burnham and 12-year-old daughter Carol-Lou, an aspiring painter herself, free to study with Spanish painter Claudio Castellucho (this did not last long – the impatient Willets-Burnham could not wait while a translator could be found to make sense of his critique) and American Impressionist Cecelia Beaux.

Willets-Burnham’s Below on the Seine River, Paris, France was exhibited at the Paris Spring Salon of 1922.

The Burnhams then traveled south through France to Barcelona, before setting up house again on the picturesque island of Deya, which would be the subject of many paintings.

From Spain their itinerary took them to Algiers and finally to Naples, Rome and Venice, through Switzerland and back to Paris.

Returning home laden with paintings, Willets-Burnham felt compelled to urge others to travel with their families, despite lack of money. The baby who had been nine months old at the beginning of the trip was now two, and pushing her own carriage and belongings - and making a drawing of herself doing it.
SP 4 "Deja, Balaeric Isles" HIlside Village
"Deja, Balaeric Isles" HIlside Village s. AWB wc 18 x 14 1/2 SP 38 "Ronda, Spain - Drawing Water"
"Ronda, Spain - Drawing Water" s. AWB wc 8 x 14 3/4