Charles Burchfield

(American, 1893-1967)

Watertower and Queen Anne's Lace, 1917

watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil on paper

signed Chas Burchfield and dated (lower left); also dated Aug 1, 1917 (on the reverse)

18 x 22 in.

We are grateful for the research conducted by Nancy Weekly, Burchfield Scholar, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, New York.

Provenance:

Dr. and Mrs. George Schillinger, West Seneca and Williamsville, New York.

Sotheby's, New York, Sale of September 21, 1984, Lot 191.

Transco Energy Company, 1984.

Casper Fine Arts & Appraisals, Inc., New York, New York.

Acquired directly from the above by the present owners, 1992.

Exhibited:

Buffalo, Buffalo State College, Burchfield Center, "Works of Charles Burchfield," October 21 – December 9, 1979.

Lot Note:

The year 1917 was a time of creative momentum for Charles Burchfield, whose early prolific output helped establish him firmly as a groundbreaking participant in American Modernism. At the time, Burchfield still lived in his childhood home in Salem, Ohio. The house—and by extension the scenery around it—has been credited for inspiring and fostering his aesthetic development. Burchfield himself referred to that period of his career as his “golden year,” and curator Henry Adams went as far as calling the dwelling “the most important house in American art history,” because of the high volume of works associated with it.

Watertower and Queen Anne’s Lace is an exceptional example of Burchfield’s early work produced in Salem, straddling the line between Regionalist tendencies and Modernist aspirations. It reveals Burchfield’s concern for industrial expansion and its impact on local rural landscapes. At the same time, it already highlights Burchfield’s whimsical take on landscape painting with the distinct organic and wispy forms that have become visual signifiers of his aesthetic. Here, the vegetation in the foreground, velvety, rounded, and plump, clashes with the angular, sprawling, and towering factories in the middle ground. But the stark visual contrast between the natural and the industrial is softened by the smoke billowing into the sky, bulbous and cottony, endowing the scene with a sense of wholeness, in spite of the jarring elements Burchfield assembled together.

Watertower and Queen Anne's Lace, 1917