DOI Heft:
Nr. 334 (March 1925)
DOI Artikel:M'Cormick, William B.: A small town in paint
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19984#0208
mceRnAcionAL
as a coal miner and who painted pictures of Salem
because he must paint something and had no
means to go elsewhere. Once upon a time, so ran
the tale, he saved enough money to journey to
New York and he carried some of his pictures
under his arm up and down Fifth avenue, receiv-
ing nothing but ciiscouragement from the dealers'
galleries until through accident he met the woman
who managed the bookshop. She gave him the
two opportunities to exhibit his work. This legend
accompanied his work to London, where Burch-
field's pictures were first shown in the autumn of
1922, making its appearance in print there as it
may have done at home previously (for it was
told often enough to art writers) without attract-
ing any attention from those in a position to have
first-hand information about Burchfield's career.
In refutation of the romantic legend as pub-
lished in London the art world was informed that
Charles Burchfield was not a self-taught artist, but
had completed a four-year course at the Cleveland
School of Art; that he was not a "miner painting
in his odd moments" but was "employed, at a
good salary, designing wallpaper for one of the
largest manufacturers in the country, who is
appreciative of his work, in which he has taken a
great deal of pleasure." Burchfield's record also
states that from 1919 to 1922 he had exhibited at
the annual shows of the Cleveland Artists and
Craftsmen, winning the first prize in watercolor
and the Penton medal in 1921. Except through
his paintings and watercolors Burchfield is the
least communicative of artists as to his career,
yet I am compelled to believe that he has been a
miner in Salem and is a designer of wallpaper since
that occupation provides him the living that the
sale of his pictures, up to 1922 at least, did not.
From his pictures, which are after all Burch-
field's chief concern and ours as well, he presents
himself as a man so wholly concerned with truth
in one phase of his work as to be a realist of dis-
concerting frankness, while in his second form of
expression he is almost classically romantic.
Through the watercolors reproduced here called
"Noonday Heat" and "The False Front," selected
for the reason that they are perfect types of his
representations of streets in Salem, it is plain to
see how brutal Burchfield may seem to be in
recording the facts composing those two scenes.
In the first are the hideous store-fronts in the
harsh brilliancy of the summer sunlight, the idlers
on the steps of one of the stores too lazy to seek
the shade, the ill-nourished horses at the hitching-
rail, the ramshackle wagon. These effects are
repeated in "The False Front," a picture now in
the permanent collection of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, only if anything they appear to
be set down even more relentlessly, owing to the
introduction of the pathetic attempt to make the
store building more impressive in height, the mirey
road and the depressing feeling of biting cold.
Whether Burchfield means to be a moralist or
four sixty-eight
MARCH I925
as a coal miner and who painted pictures of Salem
because he must paint something and had no
means to go elsewhere. Once upon a time, so ran
the tale, he saved enough money to journey to
New York and he carried some of his pictures
under his arm up and down Fifth avenue, receiv-
ing nothing but ciiscouragement from the dealers'
galleries until through accident he met the woman
who managed the bookshop. She gave him the
two opportunities to exhibit his work. This legend
accompanied his work to London, where Burch-
field's pictures were first shown in the autumn of
1922, making its appearance in print there as it
may have done at home previously (for it was
told often enough to art writers) without attract-
ing any attention from those in a position to have
first-hand information about Burchfield's career.
In refutation of the romantic legend as pub-
lished in London the art world was informed that
Charles Burchfield was not a self-taught artist, but
had completed a four-year course at the Cleveland
School of Art; that he was not a "miner painting
in his odd moments" but was "employed, at a
good salary, designing wallpaper for one of the
largest manufacturers in the country, who is
appreciative of his work, in which he has taken a
great deal of pleasure." Burchfield's record also
states that from 1919 to 1922 he had exhibited at
the annual shows of the Cleveland Artists and
Craftsmen, winning the first prize in watercolor
and the Penton medal in 1921. Except through
his paintings and watercolors Burchfield is the
least communicative of artists as to his career,
yet I am compelled to believe that he has been a
miner in Salem and is a designer of wallpaper since
that occupation provides him the living that the
sale of his pictures, up to 1922 at least, did not.
From his pictures, which are after all Burch-
field's chief concern and ours as well, he presents
himself as a man so wholly concerned with truth
in one phase of his work as to be a realist of dis-
concerting frankness, while in his second form of
expression he is almost classically romantic.
Through the watercolors reproduced here called
"Noonday Heat" and "The False Front," selected
for the reason that they are perfect types of his
representations of streets in Salem, it is plain to
see how brutal Burchfield may seem to be in
recording the facts composing those two scenes.
In the first are the hideous store-fronts in the
harsh brilliancy of the summer sunlight, the idlers
on the steps of one of the stores too lazy to seek
the shade, the ill-nourished horses at the hitching-
rail, the ramshackle wagon. These effects are
repeated in "The False Front," a picture now in
the permanent collection of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, only if anything they appear to
be set down even more relentlessly, owing to the
introduction of the pathetic attempt to make the
store building more impressive in height, the mirey
road and the depressing feeling of biting cold.
Whether Burchfield means to be a moralist or
four sixty-eight
MARCH I925