Charles Ephraim Burchfield 1893 - 1967

Charles E. Burchfield Foundation
Kennedy Galleries, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above, circa 1975

New York, Kennedy Galleries, Charles E. Burchfield - The Middle Years 1929-1950, October-November 1978, no. 32, illustrated
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Charles Burchfield, January-March, 1984

Joseph S. Trovato, Charles Burchfield: Catalogue of Paintings in Public and Private Collections, Utica, New York, 1970, p. 152, no. 799
John I.H. Baur, The Inlander: Life and Work of Charles Burchfield, 1893-1967, East Brunswick, New Jersey, 1982, p. 158, illustrated in color pl. XXX
J. Benjamin Townsend, Charles Burchfield's Journals: The Poetry of Place, Albany, New York, 1993, fig. 15, pp. 49, 51, illustrated

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Charles Burchfield moved from Cleveland to Buffalo in 1921 to work as a wallpaper designer for M.H. Birge and Sons, a necessary step to support his wife and five children. Though he felt his designs mostly to be "hack" work, they were in fact exceptional, often sinuous and richly patterned arrangements of flowers, weeds and berries. The unspoiled rural landscape of the fields that inspired him, near suburban Gardenville where the family settled, were a start contrast to the city itself – "As I... looked out over the motley collection of buildings and noted the crude manufacturing shapes... I thought it is not what a place is that makes for art – it is what the artist feels about it." (Journal,  December 1, 1922) "I felt here is the place for an artist – to dream a dream enveloped in misery – to tell the truth about this is a poetic task." (Journal, March 10, 1922)

After a paucity of output during the first several years in Buffalo, Burchfield began to produce sketches, and then more elaborate washes and watercolors of the city. A brief focus on the odd assortment of characters he encountered on the bus to work and on strolls produced 1927-28's Little Italy in Spring (Private Collection) and Promenade (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York) which later became one of his most widely-reproduced images, much to the artist's consternation. The gritty structures and harbor had attracted his interest almost immediately, but it wasn't until 1926 that he first attempted to paint them. By the late 1920's he had fully embraced the visual depth of the hard surfaces of the city, "I felt the need of drinking in through my eyes the soot-and-smoke-blackened surfaces; the coal-dust filmed earth... the sturdy grimy men..." (Journal)

This divergent thread illustrated Burchfield's ability to bring a new vision to his subject matter. He traveled a great psychic distance from the vibrant country landscapes of his "Golden Year" in 1917, to his often austere depictions of the streetscapes and desolate urban realism of 1930s Buffalo. Burchfield's growing interest in the stark American urban landscape placed him in the company of an elite cadre of artists of the Depression era, including Edward Hopper, Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood. A six-page feature in the December 1936 issue of Life Magazine, featuring his "lonely but honest pictures of the American Scene" reaffirmed the importance of the artist who had been selected as the first American given a one-person show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1930.

Burchfield had established his place among America's premier watercolorists early in his career, but by his own estimation, he had struggled with oil painting. He expressed his determination to master the medium, which was commonly associated with a seriousness and range beyond watercolor, "I'm going to turn out some good oils or die in the attempt." (letter to Frank Rehn, October 13, 1930) By 1932, he had made progress, writing,  "I am developing my handling of oil and am, I think, arriving at an individual treatment. I intend to dedicate my larger themes to oil." (letter to Rehn, March 11, 1932)

The marriage of the heavy, rusting shapes of Buffalo's hulking industrial structures with the denser medium of oil paints produced some superior results.  Two canvases, Spring Flood (1931, collection of Mr. & Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd) and Under the Viaduct (1932), "seem to have been painted with a certain ease; the handling is much like that of his watercolors and there is no evidence of the heavier, more labored technique of the later oils." (J.I.H. Baur, The Inlander, p. 158.) In Under the Viaduct, Burchfield was able to translate much of the fluidity of his work with watercolors to his brushwork in oil, keeping a finely-wrought sense of space and detail, while conveying the stark contrast of the waves of long grasses to the stone and iron of the viaduct and the encroaching warehouses and mills in the distance. The deep shadows of the viaduct shelter a pair of vagrants warming themselves by a grimy pool of water and a small fire, a brief respite from the grim economic wind whistling down the receding rail tracks, that had enveloped not just Buffalo but the entire nation, and had begun to influence the work of Burchfield's contemporaries, both the American Scene painters and Urban Realists.

Burchfield left the wallpaper mill in 1929, and his new dealer, Frank Rehn, successfully directed his artist's career, finding eager buyers for Burchfield's work. Though ultimately Burchfield produced only a small number of oil paintings,  approximately fiteen, November Evening (1931-34), Winter Twilight (1930) and Old House by Creek (1932-38) were eventually acquired by New York's Metropolitan and Whitney Museums of Art, respectively. Burchfield experienced some frustration with his largest project in oil, Grain Elevators (1931-38), and though well-satisfied with his venture, he returned exclusively to watercolor.