Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

Charles Burchfield, “Priceless Painting Here For Art Festival, Mid-June,” Photo-News, Vo. 3, No. 38, June 16, 1965, p. 28.

            Mr. Burchfield is one of America’s foremost artists in the realistic vein, ranking with Andrew Wyeth. A Buffalo native, Burchfield is represented in most major museum collections in America, as well as in countless private collections. Mr. Burchfield was born in 1893 and this work was work of the years from 1917 through 1944. This painting usually resides in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery but will be on display in the Marine Trust Bank Building during the six-day Hamburg’s Festival of the Arts, June 22 through June 27.

            This is Mr. Burchfield’s statement regarding his famous painting, Mid-June.

            “The original motif or idea, from which the picture ‘Mid-June’ was developed, was painted in 1917; the full elaboration of the motif was executed in 1944. Prior to this, I had been studying the earlier version. It seemed to me incomplete, but held within its limited scope the germ for a much larger and more complete realization of the original intention.

            “It is a hot humid day, close to the time of the summer solstice, when the sun at noon seems to be almost directly overhead, sending down its rays so nearly vertical that the light seems to come from all sides and everything seems to be flooded with golden light.

            “In the foreground is a maple tree, whose umbrella-like canopy of drooping leaves, though pierced by the sunlight thru countless fantastic interstices, nevertheless casts its circular shadow on the earth, forming a sort of cone of shade, surrounded by sunlight. In the middle ground are more trees with similar concentric shadows, beyond which can be seen vistas of yellow buttercup meadows.

            “Great tiger swallow-tail butterflies, characteristic creatures of June, are disporting themselves, reveling in the sunlight and heat. Out and down they flutter, in nervous restless flight, only pausing momentarily to rest on some convenient mandrake leaf. At times they quarrel and the skirmish presents to the eye a bewildering clash of yellow and black rhythms. Then constant motion seems to set the trees to dancing and the tops of the trees flutter and disintegrate in the hot white sky. Even the buttercups in the foreground assume a strange aspect, as if they were seen thru the butterflies’ eyes. Creatures and plants seem to be intoxicated by the sheer ecstasy of existence on such a day.”