Jun 15, 2017 - Sale 2452

Sale 2452 - Lot 97

Price Realized: $ 6,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
CHARLES BURCHFIELD
Street Scene.

Watercolor and pencil on paper, 1916. 305x230 mm; 12x9 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right recto, and dated "May 30, 1916" in pencil, verso. Ex-collection private collection; thence by descent.

Accompanying this lot is a research report completed by The Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, New York.

This painting is included in the Charles E. Burchfield Foundation Archives slide documentation of works in the artist's estate as slide number 382.

Burchfield's oeuvre is typically divided into three periods: the first until 1929; the middle until 1950; and the final period lasting until the year or so before his death. Each period is closely related, as he never strayed from portraying nature (peculiar to his mid-career was the rise of depicting town and industrial scenes however) and utilizing watercolor as his sole technique. Burchfield's early period, from which this dates, was extraordinarily prolific. He produced half of his entire oeuvre between 1915 and 1917 (Burchfield considered 1917 to be his "golden year"). He painted many of these early works from the direct vantage point of his home and experimented liberally with color.