Charles Ephraim Burchfield

(1893-1967)

Trees in Meadow 25 x 33 in. (63.5 x 83.8 cm.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Frank K.M. Rehn Galleries, New York.
Robert Leshner.
M. Knoedler & Co., New York.
William Zierler Inc., New York.
Sheldon Ross Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan.
Private collection, Florida.
Sale, Sotheby's, New York, November 28, 2007, lot 7, sold by the above.
Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, New York.
Acquired from the above by the late owner, December 8, 2009.

Literature
J.S. Trovato, Charles Burchfield: Catalogue of Paintings in Public and Private Collections, Utica, New York, 1970, p. 264, no. 1150.

This lot is accompanied by a research report completed by Nancy Weekly of the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, New York. We wish to thank her for her kind assistance cataloging this lot.

Largely self-taught, innovative painter Charles Burchfield is an artist that is nearly impossible to categorize. Labeled as regionalist, realist, expressionist and even romantic, his unique imagery is representational with a nod toward abstraction and is infused with deeply personal symbolism and emotion. Burchfield worked primarily in watercolor, rather than oil, because he found that the water-based medium allowed for an increased freedom to be spontaneous and explore his singular style, and to quickly make adjustments and corrections to his compositions.

Burchfield had three major periods in his career: the early works executed until about 1918 that focused on his childhood memory and fantasy, works that explored themes of Social Realism executed from 1918 to 1943, and a return to his early subject matter re-imagined and infused "with a kind of ecstatic poetry" that categorized his work after 1943. (M. Baigell, Charles Burchfield, New York, 1976, p. 54) The present work, Trees in Meadow, executed between 1951 and 1956, is from this third period where the artist's confidence and certainty in his medium and style lead to the creation of his most successful watercolors.

According to Nancy Weekly, Burchfield Scholar, Head of Collections & Charles Cary Rumsey Curator, Burchfield Penney Art Center, "Trees in Meadow is not listed in Charles E. Burchfield's Painting Indexes which were donated to Burchfield Penney Art Center by his widow, Mrs. C. E. Burchfield, because they only list works through 1949. However, as a painting in the artist's estate, it was documented in color slide format by the Charles E. Burchfield Foundation, numbered 107..."Although Trees in Meadow is not mentioned specifically in any journal entries for 1951 or 1956, [the following] entry may describe a plausible date and place for the initial 1951 painting which was later completed in 1956." (N. Weekly, unpublished letter, October 21, 2021)

"Sept. 21 –

To Zimmerman Rd painting –

A glorious day packed full of delightful impressions from beginning to end.

Parked at the open fields to the north of the main woods. The moment I landed, I felt at once that it was a special day – brilliant sun, hot dry wind from the southwest blowing of the meadows of bleached grass, asters and golden-rod.

I decided to do a piece featuring the asters and dry grass – almost from the first, the picture took the lead and I had to follow as best I could – and it was difficult to invent rapidly enough the semi-abstract conventionalizations (sic) that the power and beauty of the wind, sunlight and sky demanded. Worked until 3:00."
(C. E. Burchfield, Journals, vol. 52, September 21, 1951, pp. 162-166)

Weekly also notes that "Burchfield bracketed [this] entire entry with red pencil to call attention to a significant passage as he prepared to share his journals with John I. H. Baur for his 1956 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art." (N. Weekly)

Spiritually charged and shimmering with movement and energy, Trees in Meadow features the rhythmic brushwork and shapes that the artist developed at the height of his career to depict intensity, atmosphere, and weather. Nature is at center stage, in a personal dialogue between the physical and the emotional. Burchfield's stylistic techniques from this period, "gave, in more purely pictorial form, an overall pulsating quality to the paintings. With pigment and brushstroke rather than with identifying detail, Burchfield sought the forces of nature as they coursed through all things. With few distractions, he let the sky, the plants, and the earth throb with equal intensity...Using this technique, Burchfield painted atmosphere as if it had density." (M. Baigell, p. 170)

In Trees in Meadow, a wildflower and grasses-filled foreground meadow recesses to a stand of evergreen trees. A sense of motion and energy is particularly evident in the repeated use of gestural curved stripes of black that outline and flesh out the trees, that are dramatically set against a bright yellow and white sky. As well, Burchfield's final addition of quick and lively pastel highlights in bright orange and red on the trees and grasses at lower center, are layered over the dried watercolor enlivening the composition. One can sense the meadow sounds, the peaceful rustling of leaves, aster blooms, golden-rod and grasses. A coming shift in the weather is suggested by the grey clouds that blanket the sunlit sky at the top of the composition. Trees in Meadow glows with Burchfield's signature energy, and displays ideas and feelings important to and developed by the artist including transition, transcendence and mood.