Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

Charles and Bertha Burchfield noted chicory growing by the side of the road on several trips over the years. Charles gave this painting to his wife for her birthday, October 27, 1966, no doubt as a memento of the landscape they both loved. Besides the blue wildflowers contrasting with a field of golden oats, the scene includes Cabbage White butterflies; one pair flitter around a single blossom near the center foreground, perhaps symbolizing the pair on one of their country excursions, 

In August 1880, Walt Whitman wrote about them in his journal titled, “Straw-Color’d and Other Psyches,” in his book, Specimen Days & Collect:

Butterflies and butterflies, (taking the place of the bumble-bees of three months since, who have quite disappear’d,) continue to flit to and fro, all sorts, white, yellow, brown, purple—now and then some gorgeous fellow flashing lazily by on wings like artists’ palettes dabb’d with every color.  Over the breast of the pond I notice many white ones, crossing, pursuing their idle capricious flight.  Near where I sit grows a tall-stemme’d weed topt with a profusion of rich scarlet blossoms, on which the snowy insects alight and dally, sometimes four or five of them at a time.  By-and-by a humming-bird visits the same, and I watch him coming and going, daintily balancing and shimmering about.  These white butterflies give new beautiful contrasts to the pure greens of the August foliage, (we have had some copious rains lately,) and over the glistening bronze of the pond-surface.  You can tame even such insects; I have one big and handsome moth down here, knows and comes to me, likes me to hold him up on my extended hand.

A grand twelve-acre field of ripe cabbages with their prevailing hue of malachite green, and floating flying over and among them in all directions myriads of these same white butterflies.  As I came up the lane to-day I saw a living globe of the same, two to three feet in diameter, many scores cluster-d together and rolling along in the air, adhering to their ball-shape, six or eight feet above the ground.

The Cabbage White Butterfly (Pieris rapae) is a common, small-to-medium white butterfly with black-tipped forewings and a 1¼ to 1⅞ inch wingspan (63-70mm), prevalent throughout New York State. Not everyone likes them though. It's noted that their caterpillars invade crops: "Introduced from Europe in the 1860s, this invasive species is a major garden pest, with green larvae feeding on cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, and kale."