Early Spring, 1917

Provenance

ACA Galleries, New York, New York
Dr. and Mrs. Max Ellenberg, Montague, New Jersey, by 1970 Gerald Peters Gallery, New York, New York, 1998
Private collection, New York, acquired from the above, 2012 The Greenberg Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri
Private collection, acquired from above, 2017
Sale, Christie’s, New York, New York, April 17, 2026, lot 129

Exhibited

ACA Galleries, New York, New York, Second Annual Art on Paper, December 2, 1969 – January 3, 1970.
Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, Delaware, American Masters: Art of the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries, April 16-June 5, 2010.
Gerald Peters Gallery, New York, New York, Defining Modern, May 10-June 8, 2012.

Literature

J.S. Trovato, Charles Burchfield: Catalogue of Paintings in Public and Private Collections, Utica, New York, 1970,
59, 354, no. 281.

Related Works

Black Hollow (Black Void), 1917, watercolor on paper, 22 x 18 inches, signed lower right; Burchfield Penny Art Center, Buffalo State University, Buffalo, New York

An April Mood, watercolor and charcoal on joined paper, 40 x 54 inches, signed with monogram and dated lower right: CEB / 1955; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

Note

In 1912, Charles Burchfield began his studies at the Cleveland School of Art. Upon graduation in 1916, he moved to New York, where he received a scholarship to the National Academy of Design. In 1917, at the age of twenty-four, he returned to Salem, Ohio, and experienced what he would later call his “golden year,” during which his observations of nature evolved into a more stylized, abstract mode punctuated with symbolic representations. Early Spring was completed during this watershed year in his career. Indeed, Burchfield was so energized in 1917 that at times he produced watercolors at a rate of two or three a week. It was in this year that he began to fully develop his philosophy of incorporating whimsical representations of nature to evoke a deeper spiritual meaning. As seen in the present work, Burchfield’s technique of expressing movement, and even sound, allows the viewer to imagine the rustling of branches and the sound of the flowing stream.