Night Sky Over Roof

Provenance

The artist

Estate of above

Kennedy Galleries, New York, New York

Ted Shen, acquired from above, 1996

Sale, Modern American Masterworks from the Ted Shen Collection, Christie’s, New York, New York, April 21, 2023, lot 12, from above

Exhibited

Kennedy Galleries, New York, New York, Charles Burchfield, April 17–May 15, 1993

Kennedy Galleries, New York, New York, Selected Highlights of American Art, 1993

Kennedy Galleries, New York, New York, Charles E. Burchfield Discoveries: Early Watercolors, 1996

Literature

Charles Burchfield (New York: Kennedy Galleries, Inc., 1993), 17, pl. 15.

Selected Highlights of American Art (New York: Kennedy Galleries, Inc., 1993), n.p., no. 20.

Related Works

Untitled [Black and White Cloud – Cloud Study], 1916, watercolor with graphite on paper, 13⅞ x 19⅞ inches; Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State

Night Scene, 1935, watercolor, pastel, and charcoal on paper, 16⅞ x 26⅞ inches; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

Winter Moonlight, 1951, watercolor on paper, 40 x 33 inches; Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Orion in Winter, 1962, watercolor on paper, 48 x 53 15/16 inches; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain

Note: Charles Burchfield showed a fascination for the sky throughout his career, depicting the sun, moon, and stars at times with great accuracy and at others with expressive fantasy. In this work, the night sky fills the composition as the moon illuminates the scene. In 1916, Burchfield described in his journal, “I must commence to see half the sky in a picture—not merely a spot, but the whole immensity of it.”_[1]

_[1] J. Benjamin Townsend, ed., Charles Burchfield’s Journals: The Poetry of Place (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 444.