Lot 47
  • 47

Charles Ephraim Burchfield 1893 - 1967

Estimate
150,000 - 250,000 USD
Log in to view results
bidding is closed

Description

  • Charles Ephraim Burchfield
  • Midsummer in the Woods
  • signed with the artist's monogrammed initials CEB and dated 1951 (lower left); titled and dated "Midsummer in the Woods"/30 x 40/1951-59 on the reverse; and also titled and dated Midsummer in the Woods (1951-57 on the backing
  • watercolor, charcoal and chalk on joined paper mounted on board
  • 40 by 30 inches
  • (102.2 x 76.8 cm)

Provenance

Frank K.M. Rehn Galleries, New York
Susan and David Workman
Mr. and Mrs. Sid Deutsch, White Plains, New York, by 1970
Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Smolev
Private collects ion, New Jersey
Adelson Galleries, New York 
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2007

Exhibited

Utica, New York, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, The Nature of Charles Burchfield–a Memorial Exhibition, April-May 1970, no. 238z 
Clinton, New York, Hamilton College, Emerson Gallery, Extending the Golden Year: Charles Burchfield Centennial, March-April 1993, illustrated p. 49
Los Angeles, California, Hammer Museum; Buffalo, New York, Burchfield Penney Art Center; New York, Whitney Museum of Art, Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield, New York, 2009, p. 167, illustrated p. 147

Literature

Joseph S. Trovato, Charles Burchfield: Catalogue of Paintings in Public and Private collects ions, Utica, New York, 1970, no. 1082, p. 242
J. Benjamin Townsend, ed., Charles Burchfield's Journals: The Poetry of Place, Albany, New York, 1993, pp. 297, 682n25
Holland Cotter, “Nature, Up Close and Personal,” The New York t.mes s, June 25, 2010, p. C23

Catalogue Note

Burchfield noted in his Card Index on the present work, “Zimmerman Rd.—west of Boston, N.Y.” In his journal entry of August 14, 1950, he writes “To Zimmerman Rd. painting. A warm but fresh day.  How good to be out again in this wild secluded spot.  Aug. morning in the woods—cicadas singing, oval patches of sunlight falling aslant tree-trunks, spot-lighting patch of rugged bark; dry grass lit up against deep shadows under young hemlocks, likewise piles of hemlock branches, without needles, like huge spider-webs, orange-sienna in color; mushrooms, nibbled by snails whose dried slimy trails across the mushroom’s top glisten in the half-light” (J. Benjamin Townsend, ed., Charles Burchfield’s Journals: The Poetry of Place, Albany, New York, 1993, p. 297).