“There seem to be many more tiger swallow-tails this year than is usual. Gorgeous creatures, they are to be seen everywhere, making dazzling effect on wild iris, lavender lilacs, and pink roses. Yesterday two of them staged several battles in mid-air, over the possession of the wild iris clump, a fine sight, and a struggle that seemed to be without injury to either party”
(Charles E. Burchfield, June 13, 1944)
Charles Burchfield, Mid-June, 1917-1944, watercolour
My first introduction to the paintings of the American painter Charles Burchfield came through his watercolours of gloomy, forlorn, decreipt and abandoned Victorian houses, and I wrote about those watercolours on a few occasions. Later on, I discovered that there was a whole different side to his art; the vibrant, colourful, whimsical, joyous side and such is the majority of his oeuvre. An amazing example of this vibrancy and joy is the watercolour “Mid-June” painted both in June of 1917 and in June of 1944. Well, not all of it technically. Burchfield painted this nature scene in June of 1917, and revisited the watercolour decades later, in June 1944, but not by simply redoing what he had painted earlierly but by adding new sheets of paper around the original base of the wateroclour. Something particular about the art of Charles Burchfield is that he painted almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour and he took it very seriously. He was also a staunch opponent of any sort of realism. Watercolour “Mid-June” is pure loveliness. I gaze at it; at the lace-like treetop, at the quick butterflies flying about, at the greenness of it all, and I think that the fairies must have collected the dust from the flowers and the rays of hot June sun and sprinkled Burchfield’s watercolours with it. The entire surface of the watercolour seems to be flickering, trembling from excitement, and everything is so lumionous and bathed in golden lightness. I adore the effect of the butterfly caught in flight which you can see in detail bellow.
From 14 April to 15 May 1944 the Buffalo Fine Art Academy presented an exhibition “Charles Burchfield: A Retrospective Exhibition of Water Colors and Oils, 1916-1943” at the Albright Art Gallery. It was around the same time that Burchfield began reworking his paintings and in 1946 the same Academy bought the waterolour “Mid-June”. Burchfield explained the inspiration behind the watercolour in a letter the gallery’s director who had organised the 1944 exhibition:
“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.”
As I already wrote earlier, later in his career Burchfield often returned to the watercolours that he had painted back in 1917, and not just the watercolours it seems, but to a state of mind that he had at the time, hoping to recapture it, reclaim the youthful optimism and joyfulness. In 1965, reflecting on the fifty years of his career, Burchfield said: “I have always believed 1917 to be the ‘golden year’ of my career. Forgotten were the frustrations and the longing for more freedom. The big city was not for me. I was back home in the town and countryside where I had grown up, which were now transformed by the magic of an awakened art outlook. Memories of my boyhood crowded in upon me to make that time also a dream world of the imagination.” Burchfield’s love for the small towns, the comfort he found in such a setting, and his enjoyment of nature shines through in all of his watercolours. He truly had a gift of tranforming the mundane into magic and that is why the term “magic realism” can be applied to his art so well.
I think there are several lessons we can learn from Charles Burchfield’s approach to art; firstly to spend more time in nature in order to meet her charms, to find beauty in the everyday, in the plain and mundane spaces, to embrace colours, and finally, to not give up on things, or, more specifically, on artworks. Don’t be afraid to leave an artwork if you don’t feel inspired anymore, but also don’t hesitate to pick it up again and rework it. When I don’t finish a painting in a week, I think it’s a lost cause, but in Burchfield’s case I see that he had returned to his watercolour almost thirty years later. And why wouldn’t he? An unfinished painting? Unfinished at this point in time, not necessarily never.
Byron's Muse 
lovely !!
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