While it is true that Burra was always drawn to places where transgressive sexualities flourished – clubs, cafés, anonymous street corners – he himself remained, camera-like, a non-participating observer. The thousands of letters Burra wrote to his close friends, now archived at the Tate, may bounce along in high camp style – men are routinely referred to as "she", and everyone is "dearie" – but it remains essentially a textual performance. Burra was happy to label himself a sexless creature. The only time he admitted to an erection – a weak one at that – was while watching a film of Mae West.

The counterweight to all this filthy talk was, incongruously, daily life in Rye, East Sussex, 30 or so miles up the coast from Chichester. The wealthy Burras were happily above all that. Their handsome mansion was surrounded by 11 buffering acres and they were too secure to worry about what the neighbours thought. Nonetheless Burra knew enough of what he called "Tinkerbelle Towne" and its twitchy inhabitants to want to poke fun. Although Burra will probably always remain best known for his early images of city life, his painting continued to develop throughout his career. As the 30s darkened, he followed the example of his beloved Goya and painted the cruelty of war, especially the tragedy of turning innocent young men into killing machines. He produced a series of powerful paintings in which diggers, lorries and tractors morph into monsters ripping through the landscape with a hungry, polluting lust.

By the time he produced these works, Burra's own horizons had shrunk. Following the death of his mother in the 1960s, he moved into a small cottage in the grounds of the family home. His sister came in every day and there were occasional motoring holidays around Britain with Billy Chappell, during which Burra would periodically stiffen, and fix an image on his all-seeing eye. He continued to be obsessed with his work to the exclusion of all else, explaining in a rare moment of candour that the only time he was not in pain was when he was painting. In a filmed interview given towards the end of his life, Burra declared, or rather drawled, "I think you ought to work, to paint. Otherwise, if you don't do enough painting, what's the point of it all?" He died in 1976 at the age of 72 having lived far longer – and triumphantly – than anyone could possibly have predicted.

Kathrine Hughes – The Guardian Nov 2011