Charles Burchfield (1893–1967)
Empty Barn and Sheds, 1917
Watercolor and gouache on paper
20¼ x 18 inches
Kurt Berger Fund Purchase, 90.1.1
Reproduced with permission of the Charles E. Burchfield Foundation
Essay by Lisa Dickinson Michaux, Ph.D.
Independent scholar, formerly Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Charles Burchfield was born near the shores of Lake Erie in Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio, in 1893. After his father died in 1898, he moved with his mother and five siblings to Salem, Ohio, a small town about twenty miles southwest of Youngstown. As a young boy, Burchfield spent hours wandering in the nearby woods and developed a deep, abiding love of nature that defines and characterizes his art.
Burchfield attended the Cleveland School (now Institute) of Art from 1912 to 1916 and was awarded a scholarship to the National Academy of Design in New York City after graduation. He quit after only one class, but was able to make important connections that would eventually lead to his first formal exhibitions in New York.[1] Burchfield was miserable in the city and, after only two months, returned to his mother’s house in Salem. He worked five days a week and Saturday mornings as an accounting clerk in a local sheet metal factory, dedicating nearly every other moment to his art. He later described this period: “I felt sorry for myself, for I longed to devote all my waking hours to painting, but the very fact that I could not, forced me to make every moment I did have count to the utmost. My mind was teeming with ideas; I had a pad in my desk for making notes of things I had seen on my walks to and from work or ideas for a manner of working, to be carried out during the leisure hours.”[2]
Most scholars divide Burchfield’s career into three distinct periods: the early period, from 1917 to 1921, when the artist was enthralled by his local surroundings in Ohio; the middle years, 1922 to 1943, when his works were strongly realist; and the final stage, from 1943 until his death in 1967, when his large expressionist landscapes took on a mystical quality. Empty Barn and Sheds of 1917 is an excellent example of the extraordinary watercolors produced during Burchfield’s early period. The artist himself routinely referred to 1917 as the “golden year” of his career, when he was back in his hometown and this familiar landscape was “transformed by the magic of an awakened art outlook.”[3] His mature style developed and the originality of the watercolors from this period prompted Alfred Barr Jr., the director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, to choose Burchfield’s work of 1916 to 1918 as the focus of the artist’s first major solo exhibition in 1930.[4]
Burchfield was consistently drawn to the idea of transition, especially the change of seasons. He was particularly fascinated by the transition of winter into spring and described it as “the most glorious ‘transition’ of all … So full of hope and promise, like the gates of Paradise opening up after the winter of life.”[5] On the verso of Empty Barn and Sheds Burchfield inserted the date, May 6, 1917, and inscribed, “A misty, lowering day in spring, in an alley / A strange white light hovers around the edges of all subjects.” His poetic statement was most certainly taken from the notes made while walking to and from his job or in the journals he kept throughout his life.[6] He captured the hazy quality of melting snow and the evaporation of winter’s precipitation transforming into mist as it meets the warmer spring air. The “strange white light” is attained through a delicate interplay between the white of the paper and the addition of bold strokes of white gouache. These brilliant outlines bring a dynamic energy to the painting and reflect the enthusiasm Burchfield felt in the presence of nature.
Burchfield was the only artist of his generation to devote his entire career almost exclusively to watercolor. He was drawn to the medium for its directness, as well as the fact that it was easily transportable and quick to dry.[7] The vibrant Empty Barn and Sheds reveals the artist’s sophisticated use of color—including olive green in the leaves of the tree, a golden hue in the slumbering vegetation coming back to life under the melting snow, and a vibrant blue in the shadows of the buildings. Burchfield did not use charcoal or pencil underdrawing, but worked directly on the paper and developed his subject quickly and with intensity. There is a variety of brushwork and a lively interplay between the strong strokes of the wooden structures and the vigor of the limbs and leaves of the central tree.
Trees play an important role in Burchfield’s compositions and often had an emotional significance for the artist. Here it is not hard to imagine that this lone tree, with its lively branches, signifies a welcome embrace to the transition to spring weather and the promise of a new season.
[1] As a result of his time in New York in the fall of 1916, Burchfield made connections that resulted in exhibitions at the Sunwise Turn Bookshop in 1917, Kevorkian Gallery in 1921, and Montross Gallery in 1926 and 1928.
[2] Charles E. Burchfield, His Golden Year: A Retrospective Exhibition of Watercolors, Oils and Graphics (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965), 17.
[3] Ibid., 20.
[4] Charles Burchfield: Early Watercolors, 1916-1918, on view at the Museum of Modern Art between April 11 and April 26, 1930.
[5] Charles Burchfield, letter to Harold Olmsted, 1954, in Joseph S. Trovato, Charles Burchfield, Catalogue of Paintings in Public and Private Collections(Utica, New York: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, 1970), 13.
[6] Burchfield kept a journal from age 16 until 10 months before he died at age 73. See J. Benjamin Townsend, ed., Charles Burchfield’s Journals: The Poetry of Place (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).
[7] Cynthia Burlingham, “A Natural Preference: Burchfield and Watercolor,” in Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield, ed. Cynthia Burlingham and Rober Gober (Los Angeles: Hammer Museum; New York: DelMonico Books, 2009), 15.