Self-taught painter, father of the artist Glynis R Burns, born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Harry Burns developed a traditional landscape style based on fast, on-the-spot brushwork in weather that sometimes necessitated anchoring his easel with stones. He left school at 14, was apprenticed as a fitter with the Ulster Weaving Company and ended employment with Short’s, the aircraft firm, in 1965 to fulfill his childhood ambition to be a professional painter. Initially a watercolourist Burns changed mainly to oils, depicting the Lagan Valley, glens near Belfast, Antrim Coast, Mourne Mountains, west of Ireland and especially Donegal. Elected RUA in 1947, and showed widely, being especially collected in America and Australia, sometimes painting to commission.