“I like to think of myself—as an artist—as being in a nondescript swamp, alone, up to my knees in mire, painting the vital beauty I see there, in my own way, not caring a damn about tradition, or anyone’s opinion.”

—Charles Burchfield, Gardenville, February 8, 1938

The Artist

Charles Ephraim Burchfield (1893-1967) was an American painter, best known for his watercolor landscapes. Burchfield was born April 9, 1893, in Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio. Five years later, his family moved to Salem, Ohio, where he graduated from high school as class valedictorian in 1911. He attended the Cleveland School of Art from 1912-1916 and studied with Henry G. Keller, Frank N. Wilcox, and William J. Eastman.

In 1921, Burchfield moved to Buffalo, New York, to work as a designer for the prominent wallpaper company, M.H. Birge & Sons Company. The next year he married Bertha Kenreich, with whom he raised five children. He became friends with Edward Hopper in 1928, after Hopper’s essay on Burchfield appeared in the July issue of Arts magazine. Hopper wrote, “The work of Charles Burchfield is most decidedly founded, not on art, but on life, and the life that he knows and loves best.”

In 1929, the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City began representing Burchfield, allowing the artist to resign from his job as a designer to paint full-time. In 1930, his work was the subject of the Museum of Modern Art in New York’s first one-person exhibition, Charles Burchfield: Early Watercolors 1916-1918. He was included in the Carnegie Institute’s The 1935 International Exhibition of Paintings, in which his painting The Shed in the Swamp (1933-34) was awarded second prize. In December 1936 Life magazine declared him one of America’s ten greatest painters in its article “Burchfield’s America.”

Burchfield’s artistic achievement was honored with the creation of the Charles Burchfield Center at Buffalo State College on December 9, 1966, a month before his death on January 11, 1967. Today, the Burchfield Penney Art Center stands as a testament to the art and vision of Charles Burchfield and the artists of Western New York State, and the museum holds the largest public collection of works by Burchfield as well as more than 70 volumes of handwritten journals, 25,000 drawings and other ephemera including a scale re-creation of the artist’s Gardenville, New York studio.

 

Charles Burchfield’s Biography

Born in Ohio, Burchfield spent most of his adult life living and working in Western New York …more

Burchfield’s Words

Charles Burchfield’s journals, part of the Charles E. Burchfield Archive at the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College, are among the most detailed history of…more

The Archives

The Charles E. Burchfield Archive is an extraordinary archive of drawings, sketches, texts and other materials relating to the life and artwork of Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967) and makes the Burchfield Penney…more

Burchfield Penney Art Center

The Burchfield Penney was founded in 1966 on the campus of Buffalo State College to honor the legacy of Charles E. Burchfield and the artists of Western New York State. In November 2008, the museum’s first free-standing building opened to…more