Professor Joe Burke home at Trinity again!
From Wednesday 19 August, the portrait of Professor Joseph Burke KBE, CBE, OBE (TC Residential Tutor 1974) painted by Noel Counihan has been hung in Hall to popular acclaim by staff and students. The richness of the colour palette and Burke’s debonair gaze, with which he surveys all before him, is complemented by the cigarette in his upheld hand. Burke was known to teach in rooms filled with dense cigarette smoke! He is also remembered for referring to students with “Lovely, lovely” and “Bless you, bless you!”
Negotiations with Dr Chris McAuliffe, Director of the Potter Museum of Art, have resulted in this long term loan to our Portrait Collection. This is our second long term loan, the other being a portrait of Sir Andrew Grimwade CBE, Chairman of the Art Committee, painted by Clifton Pugh (1990) from the NGV.
Professor Burke was Anglo-Irish by birth, British by education, and with the outbreak of World War II, this sensitive intellectual was seconded to work in the Home Office and Ministry of Home Security. Sir Andrew suggests in his paper “Joe Burke’s legacy”, perhaps under the guise of a spy at MI5 as an early James Bond. Burke served as private Secretary to three successive Lord Presidents of Council.
After he came to Melbourne as the inaugural Herald Professor of Fine Arts in 1947, he revolutionized the arts scene and was greatly admired by his contemporaries. As a resident tutor at Trinity College, he lived in the Vatican. He organized art tours for resident students and displayed contemporary pieces on the blank walls in the Dining Hall, at his own expense, “to see how the students react to them”. He presented several works to the College’s Art Collection including a David Fitts’ work on paper, and a copy of the double portrait “Burke and Caldwell or The Book’s Progress” (1964) by Charles Bush which shows him with his friend Colin Caldwell, also a benefactor to the College.
An art educator, eminent scholar, published author, historian and administrator, Trinity College bestowed its highest honour upon him, naming him one of the first three Fellows in 1974.