Anita Willets-Burnham
“Second Journey”
1928-1930

Willets-Burnham longed to paint China, and the appetites of the rest of the family had been excited by their earlier travels, so it was not a big step to decide to go on a longer and more ambitious journey, seven years later.

Learning from their prior travels, they took almost nothing in personal baggage, but did manage to pack a traveling stove in addition to the necessary portable easels and paintboxes.

The family traveled west by train, stopping in Los Angeles to visit relatives before continuing on to the port of Seattle to catch their ship to Japan. The addition of friend Bailey suggested the joke, “The Burnham and Bailey Circus.” From Japan they continued to Korea and then to China – by junk.

As she would do throughout her travels, Willets-Burnham painted what she saw – some city-scapes well-known monuments, but mainly the life of the people: laborers, factory workers, marketplaces, fishermen, portraits of grandmothers and children. Setting up her paints at a moment’s notice, she was able to capture a sense of movement in the changing and shifting patterns of her complex compositions.

Traveling south to Bangkok and Siam, the artist was welcomed by Princess Pilai and invited to teach at her local painting class, and the American Ambassador asked the colorful family to tea before their departure for India.

Visiting the Taj Mahal for Carol-Lou’s twenty-first birthday, while in India the ambitious Willets-Burnham also secured audiences with Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.

From Bombay they traveled through the Suez Canal to Cairo, continuing on to the pyramids and then to Jerusalem. There daughter Florence decided to marry an American archeologist digging at King Solomon’s stables at Megiddo with James Breasted’s Rockefeller expedition. The family continued on, one member short, to Syria, Cyprus and Greece. There Willets-Burnham and Carol-Lou’s photograph, taken while sketching the Parthenon, made front-page news in Athens.

Leaving the Mediterranean, the Burnhams traveled by boat to Hungary and Austria, and finally to Germany and Belgium before leaving the Continent for a second visit to London.

From London they returned to Paris by way of the fortified island Mont St. Michel. Carol-Lou, determined to continue her art studies in Paris, remained there while the reduced family continued on again to Spain, visiting Madrid’s Prado Museum and the Alhambra en route by sea to Tangiers and then on again to the Isle of Deya.

But their Log House, which, mortgaged and rented, had paid for the trip, was now empty. It was time to return home - leaving Carol-Lou at Fontainebleau to continue her art studies – and time to write a book about their travels.
16-BangkWC.JPG
16-BangkWC.JPG "Bangkok, Siam - 20 Min Sketch" Man with Boats s. AWB wc 14 3/4 x 18 1/4 CHIC 17 "Dry Dock, Chicago River"
"Dry Dock, Chicago River" s. AWB wc on board 14 3/4 x 14 CN 51 Street Scene "Chin Arts Co"
Street Scene "Chin Arts Co"