© The Charles E. Burchfield Foundation, Inc.
On view
American Art
Wilmerding Pavilion
Philip & Nancy Anschutz Gallery
Wilmerding Pavilion
Philip & Nancy Anschutz Gallery
Summer Benediction,
1948
Charles Ephraim Burchfield, 1893–1967; born Ashtabula Harbor, OH; died West Seneca, NY
x1978-96
Burchfield employed watercolor almost exclusively throughout his long, highly productive career. Around 1917, he developed a system of calligraphic symbols representing various natural phenomena in order to animate his images with the energy of nature and express his pantheism. Burchfield explained that his work emerged from a deeply felt exploration of nature, his surroundings, and the significance of place, onto which he projected his internal state. He later pursued a more subdued realism, but, sensing a loss of vitality around 1940, he returned to the abstracted style of his early years, producing increasingly large and vibrant works such as Summer Benediction, whose limited palette is enlivened by bold, powerful brushstrokes of alternating transparency and opacity.
Information
Title
Summer Benediction
Dates
1948
Medium
Watercolor
Dimensions
89 x 66 cm (35 1/16 x 26 in.)
frame: 104.5 × 80.5 × 1.5 cm (41 1/8 × 31 11/16 × 9/16 in.)
Credit Line
Bequest of Sinclair Hamilton, Class of 1906
Object Number
x1978-96
Place Made
North America, United States, New York, West Seneca
Signatures
Artist monogram and date in crayon, lower left: CEB | 1948
Culture
Type
Materials
Subject
Sinclair Hamilton (1884-1978); bequeathed to the Princeton University Art Museum, 1978.
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1978," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 38, no. 1 (1979): p. 14-38., p. 28 (illus.)
- John Wilmerding et al., American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: volume 1: drawings and watercolors, (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 87, fig. 1; pp. 301–302, checklist no. 140; p. 302 (left half of verso, rotated illus.)
