Looking at the Masters: Charles Burchfield in Autumn

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967), born in Ashtabula, Ohio, has been associated with American Modernism, but this category does not begin to capture the scope of his watercolor paintings. They are in the collections of more than 100 museums in America and Europe. He was a visionary whose love of nature in every season, time of day, and condition inspired his unique paintings. Autumn is upon us, and Burchfield shares his response to the season through his watercolors and journal entries.

Burchfield began his journal in junior high school. He was determined to record all the flowering plants in Salem, Ohio, where he grew up. “Autumnal Wind and Rain’’ (1915) (14’’x20’’) (watercolor) is an early work that concentrates on the shapes of leaves blowing in the wind. White streaks are painted across the leaves. The viewer might think at first the white streaks are a depiction of rain. However, the hazy yellow sky in the background gives no indication of a storm. A simple compositional device, two green spots of paint in the foreground anchor the image, and the red paint at the right also holds the composition steady. The group of light gray towers to the right suggest a town beyond the trees. Another area of light gray painted in the middle ground also suggests the presence of a building with two windows. This early painting is simple, subtle, and effective. In a journal entry dated October 21, 1914, Burchfield commented on the piece: ‘’The third of wonderfully fair October days.  My heart seems ever on the point of bursting with the beauty of this autumn.  It is a golden age. All my thoughts seemed touched with the golden atmosphere.” In 1915, he wrote, “My diary seems to be a journal of the wind, sunshine and sky.” He was “gathering the materials for a lifetime.” 

Burchfield did not write about the influence of other artists on his style; however, in “Autumnal Wind and Rain’’ and other early works there is an oriental tendency. He worked as a guard at the Hatch Galleries in Cleveland in 1914. He saw an exhibition of Chinese scroll paintings. He wrote that he would “execute, in a continuous form, the transitions or sequence of weather events in a day, or several days or seasons.” These he called “all-day sketches” and there is a sense of sequence to the painting of the leaves. 

Burchfield graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1916, and he received a scholarship to attend the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York City. After just one day in a life drawing class, he left. In his early work, he had developed his own watercolor technique using washes, black ink for opaque areas, and white gouache, not acceptable in traditional watercolor. He used dry-brush watercolor on paper that stoop upright like a canvas on an easel. His unique technique would continue, but his subject matter broadened to include architecture.  Burchfield served in the army, applying his painting skills to camouflage tanks and artificial hills. He was honorably discharged in 1919. 

Burchfield married Berthe Kenreich in 1922. They had five children. The family moved to the rural neighborhood of Gardenville in West Seneca near Buffalo, New York. He was represented in 1928 by the Frank Rehn Gallery in New York City. Edward Hopper, Reginald March, and Bradley Tomlin also were represented by the Gallery. From 1928 onward, he was able to support his family by making art. The Museum of Modern Art exhibited his watercolors in 1935. In that same year his work was included in the International Exhibition of Paintings at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. Also in 1935, Life Magazine named him one of the ten most important American painters.

As Burchfield’s paintings developed, he added a wider landscape that included nature in all its moods. “Wind Scattered Leaves” (1944) (20”x25’’) is a depiction of autumn. Orange and yellow leaves are spread below the trees. Fields in the distance transition from bright greens to dusty brown and other pale colors. Evergreens provide contrast with the black trunk of a nearby tree in the foreground. Farther off, a dull gray-green and tan bush, still holding its leaves, is a reminder that winter approaches. Some of the black leaves higher in the sky could double as crows. Some of the leaves in the right foreground are painted with sharp brush points to depict the dryness of the season. Burchfield noted, “Most of the leaves are down, dried & pale-yellow brown but here & there some glowing red ones. A puff of wind scattered the leaves along the surface and they caught the sunlight with little halos around them.”

A look at the application of the paint in “Wind Scattered Leaves” reveals Burchfield’s technique of overlapping brush-strokes of color. The energy can be seen. He was a master of watercolor, considered to be the most difficult of medium. 

 

“Autumnal Fantasy” (1944) (37”x53”) displays another aspect of Burchfield’s painting. From the beginning his fascination with nature and with Transcendentalism, developed in New England in c.1836 and promoted by authors Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others. Burchfield held the belief that God and nature are the same, and through intuition, emotion rather than reason, and being in nature the individual can experience the divine.  In the painting, repeating and swirling lines of paint are used the depict earth and water. Tree bark is painted with distinct and detailed patterns. 

The sunlight is painted with a mystical golden glow. The sounds of bugs and birds in the woods are created by rows of black semi-circles coming from various parts of the woods. Burchfield wants viewers to experience all of the senses–sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch–as he does.  At the end of his life, he asked, “Will I ever truly be able to express the elemental power & beauty of God’s woods?”

 

In “Autumn Storm” (1948) (26’’x40”), Burchfield captured another of nature’s moods, with dark clouds of a coming storm. The clouds cast the earth beneath them in darkness. The skeletal trees bend in the wind, and the dry grasses seem to quiver as the storm approaches. Burchfield’s journal reports many such experiences: “I spent some time wandering around in the woods trying to find just the right spot to carry out my idea, which has obsessed [me] for some time (the lynx woods giving the feeling of the coming of winter into the glory of autumn).” (October 17,1956) Later, he wrote, “In the north, gigantic thunderstorms were slowly moving eastward, constantly swelling upward and changing form–breath-taking sight, with such pure white tops, and never getting much darker…” (September 1, 1962) 

Burchfield was elected in 1954 to the National Academy of Design in New York. The prestigious honorary association was organized “to promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition.”. He also was elected in 1958 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and received a gold medal in an exhibition in 1960. During that period, he began to experience problems with his health: rheumatoid arthritis in 1955 and a heart attack in 1963.

Burchfield painted “October Outside” (1963) (39”x27’’) indoors. He continued to paint no matter his health. The viewer sees a well-weathered wood door with several decorative panels and a glass window. The outdoor scene is reflected in the window. The pickets of the fence cast green shadows across the lawn. A green pot is set on a plant stand. The black tree trunk is topped with orange, red, and yellow leaves. Burchfield suffered a fatal heart attack in 1967. He was in the yard of his home, working on a painting to be titled “Early Spring.”

The Charles Burchfield Center at Buffalo State College was dedicated to the artist in 1966. It was renamed The Burchfield Art Center in 1983 with a mission to support various artistic pursuits.  It became the Burchfield Penney Art Center between 1991 and 1994, when Charles Rand Penney donated 1,300 works by New York artists, including 183 by Burchfield. A 29-acre art and nature complex in West Seneca, New York, was named for Burchfield in 1992. 

Near the end of his life, Burchfield expressed the sentiment, “How slowly the ‘secrets’ of my art come to me.” 

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Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning, Centreville. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.