CHARLES EPHRAIM BURCHFIELD (1893-1967)

Depicting Zimmerman Road, near the town of Boston, New York, in Queen Anne’s Lace of 1946, Charles Burchfield does not merely transcribe nature, but rather acts as a conduit to capture on paper its life force and unpredictability. Queen Anne’s Lace were “one of Burchfield’s favorite wildflowers,” Nancy Weekly writes, “illustrating the delicate beauty of nature.” (Charles Burchfield: The Sacred Woods, Albany, New York, 1993, p. 92) While delicately arranged, in the present work, Burchfield’s perspective allows the circular formations of miniature white flowers to dominate the landscape in larger-than-life scale as they propagate across the entire field. Their swirling forms add movement to the scene, which is underscored by the upward drive of the tree trunks that are surrounded by almost wing or web-like forms propelling them into the brilliant blue sky. Reverberating brushwork throughout echoes with the sounds and rhythms of nature, creating a quintessential Burchfield synesthetic composition.

The work perhaps brings to life Burchfield’s poetic memories of a mid-August Sunday morning during his boyhood in Ohio: “down a sun-drenched street whose vista extends out to fields of queet [i.e., Queen] Anne’s lace & chicory dim with hot steam-like mist…The world outside is left to itself—White clouds that have a melted look appear in the hot blue sky; they seem to struggle upward towards the sun, like moths seeking annihilation in a flame, trailing behind them shadows across the sky, like dark rays…Round about stand tall gaunt poplars…From the topmost branches of one comes the pulsating metallic drone of a cicada…all seem to yearn upwards ever upwards.” (as quoted in Charles Burchfield: The Sacred Woods, p. 43)