.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Charles Burchfield is one of the most celebrated American watercolorists of the twentieth century and a true naturalist who painted with a deep understanding and love of the landscapes of rural Ohio which surrounded him for much of his life. In his works, one can feel that "Burchfield's voyage was not based nearly as much on his mind interacting with itself as on a transcendental faith in the operations of nature. To become one with himself, he did not provoke dialog with his unconscious as much as try to let the spirit and moods of nature pass through him. Instead of existential anguish, which takes place in one's mind, Burchfield flung his body on the ground, literally, the better to feel nature's pulse. It was not set--understanding Burchfield was after, but a sense of participation in and reception to the forces that generate from the earth and the heavens." (M. Baigell, Charles Burchfield, New York, 1976, p. 179)
The present watercolor, Backyards in Golden Sunlight, demonstrates this complete immersion in nature; in fact nature seems to have taken over the picture--dandelions, flowers and shrubs growing recklessly throughout the entire foreground, with vibrant ladybugs and other creatures crawling around the peripheries. His love of nature began in his childhood, as he walked through the woods near his home. This continued while a student at the Cleveland School of Art, where he read essays by naturalist John Burroughs, travel journals by John Audubon and later, stories by Herman Melville and Ralph Waldo Emerson. This love and respect for the force and unpredictability of nature can be seen in his reverence for the living plants and creatures in his landscape paintings. He surrounds them with warm and lush surroundings, constantly changing and moving.
A band of decaying and tired looking houses inhabit the middle ground of the work, seemingly overrun by the advance of the physical environment. Burchfield meditated at length about the place of the house in American life, and therefore in his paintings. "It should not be surprising that a painter weaned on picturesque sentimentalism would make houses prominent elements in his work. Growing up in the 1890s...Burchfield could hardly have escaped awareness of Victorian America's obsession with houses and domestic life. In the Victorian ideology of domesticity, homes, such as they were called, were aggressively promoted as the most important institutions within society. Literature on the architecture and furnishing of homes and on the proper conduct of domestic life was ubiquitous and inescapable...In Burchfield's work the Victorian obsession with houses take three distinct but interrelated forms. First, Burchfield sees houses as the locus of spirits or as anthropomorphic structures. Second, he is fascinated by the affective powers of old houses and houses that look old. Third, and perhaps most intriguing, he is drawn less to the facades of houses than to their backs, which he records in numerous images." (N. Maciejunes and M. Hall, "Of Times, Places, and Old Houses," The Paintings of Charles Burchfield: North by Midwest, New York, 1997, p. 57)
Burchfield embellishes his sky in Backyards in Golden Sunlight with a cluster of trees, radiating the strong rays of the sun hanging prominently in the center of the work. Burchfield's trees hold symbolic importance throughout his oeuvre, whether meant to suggest life and regeneration, death and decay, or meant to take on religious significance. "Burchfield seems to have identified particularly closely with trees, and play the role for him that figures do in the work of most other artists. As one looks through Burchfield's work, it becomes apparent that he divided his trees into fairly distinct types, each of which seems to have a specific "personality" and emotional significance..." (H. Adams, "The Context of Meaning," The Paintings of Charles Burchfield: North by Midwest, p. 114)
Burchfield changed his focus from Realism to Expressionism in the later years of his career. Nature was once again new to the artist, resulting in a period of time which produced arguably the best works of Burchfield's career. Finished in 1966, Backyards in Golden Sunlight exemplifies Burchfield's extraordinary ability to combine the spiritual and the natural, bringing the picture alive through his brushwork and style. John Canaday comments on the artist's work from 1966: "He has not greatly changed or enlarged the manner in which he has been painting since the mid-nineteen-forties (an expressionist celebration of nature with occasional echos, however faint, of his former preoccupation with the American scene), but he has never painted with a surer touch or a more delicate one. He has never caught us up more effectively into his poetic vision of sunlight (or moonlight), skies, wind and flowers..." ("A Poet's Celebration of Nature," J.S. Trovato, Charles Burchfield: A Catalogue of Paintings in Public and Private Collections, Utica, New York, 1970, p. 333)
The present watercolor, Backyards in Golden Sunlight, demonstrates this complete immersion in nature; in fact nature seems to have taken over the picture--dandelions, flowers and shrubs growing recklessly throughout the entire foreground, with vibrant ladybugs and other creatures crawling around the peripheries. His love of nature began in his childhood, as he walked through the woods near his home. This continued while a student at the Cleveland School of Art, where he read essays by naturalist John Burroughs, travel journals by John Audubon and later, stories by Herman Melville and Ralph Waldo Emerson. This love and respect for the force and unpredictability of nature can be seen in his reverence for the living plants and creatures in his landscape paintings. He surrounds them with warm and lush surroundings, constantly changing and moving.
A band of decaying and tired looking houses inhabit the middle ground of the work, seemingly overrun by the advance of the physical environment. Burchfield meditated at length about the place of the house in American life, and therefore in his paintings. "It should not be surprising that a painter weaned on picturesque sentimentalism would make houses prominent elements in his work. Growing up in the 1890s...Burchfield could hardly have escaped awareness of Victorian America's obsession with houses and domestic life. In the Victorian ideology of domesticity, homes, such as they were called, were aggressively promoted as the most important institutions within society. Literature on the architecture and furnishing of homes and on the proper conduct of domestic life was ubiquitous and inescapable...In Burchfield's work the Victorian obsession with houses take three distinct but interrelated forms. First, Burchfield sees houses as the locus of spirits or as anthropomorphic structures. Second, he is fascinated by the affective powers of old houses and houses that look old. Third, and perhaps most intriguing, he is drawn less to the facades of houses than to their backs, which he records in numerous images." (N. Maciejunes and M. Hall, "Of Times, Places, and Old Houses," The Paintings of Charles Burchfield: North by Midwest, New York, 1997, p. 57)
Burchfield embellishes his sky in Backyards in Golden Sunlight with a cluster of trees, radiating the strong rays of the sun hanging prominently in the center of the work. Burchfield's trees hold symbolic importance throughout his oeuvre, whether meant to suggest life and regeneration, death and decay, or meant to take on religious significance. "Burchfield seems to have identified particularly closely with trees, and play the role for him that figures do in the work of most other artists. As one looks through Burchfield's work, it becomes apparent that he divided his trees into fairly distinct types, each of which seems to have a specific "personality" and emotional significance..." (H. Adams, "The Context of Meaning," The Paintings of Charles Burchfield: North by Midwest, p. 114)
Burchfield changed his focus from Realism to Expressionism in the later years of his career. Nature was once again new to the artist, resulting in a period of time which produced arguably the best works of Burchfield's career. Finished in 1966, Backyards in Golden Sunlight exemplifies Burchfield's extraordinary ability to combine the spiritual and the natural, bringing the picture alive through his brushwork and style. John Canaday comments on the artist's work from 1966: "He has not greatly changed or enlarged the manner in which he has been painting since the mid-nineteen-forties (an expressionist celebration of nature with occasional echos, however faint, of his former preoccupation with the American scene), but he has never painted with a surer touch or a more delicate one. He has never caught us up more effectively into his poetic vision of sunlight (or moonlight), skies, wind and flowers..." ("A Poet's Celebration of Nature," J.S. Trovato, Charles Burchfield: A Catalogue of Paintings in Public and Private Collections, Utica, New York, 1970, p. 333)