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resident and long-time Burnell friend, remembers 40 years ago when he and Burnell shared an office on Churchland Boulevard. “We had a long hallway where Bobby would, even then, practice his painting,” he recalled. “He did a painting of the train station in West Norfolk and showed me how he painted the tracks to almost disappear in the distance. Then he painted a tree at the end of the tracks to help the perspective. He was always into visual details like that.” For years, Burnell taught art classes at Tidewater Community College. He still teaches free weekly classes at the Westhaven Baptist Church in Portsmouth, where Sunday mornings find him sitting in his late mother’s seat in the fourth pew back. “I don’t want to be famous,” he has said repeatedly. “I just want my art to be famous.” Burnell may be one of the few who achieve their life goal — thanks, in part, to the lessons learned on the Western Branch.
When J. Robert Burnell was growing up, his grandfather harvested oysters along the Elizabeth River. Memories like that inspire much of Burnell’s work, like this piece, “Taking Oysters on the Western Branch 1913.”
Photographer John H. Sheally II and writer Phyllis Speidell worked with J. Robert Burnell to create his biography “The Reality of J. Robert Burnell – His Life and his Art,” released in October. You can find the
fully illustrated book at the Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center gift shop in downtown Portsmouth, at all three A. Dodson’s locations, at Hartung Gallery in Portsmouth and at the Crittenden Frame in Eclipse.