Red Sun

Provenance

The artist

Estate of above

Rehn Gallery, New York, New York

Sid Deutsch Gallery, New York, New York

Private collection, acquired from above, 1976

Estate of above

Meredith Ward Fine Art, New York, New York

Exhibited

Charles Burchfield 1920: The Architecture of Painting, DC Moore Gallery, New York, New York, March 18–April 25, 2009; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, May 22–August 2, 2009; Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State, New York, August 29–November 29, 2009

Literature

Charles Burchfield 1920: The Architecture of Painting (New York: DC Moore Gallery, 2009), 81, 109.

Related Works

Cottages in the Winter Rain, ca. 1920, watercolor, pencil, and charcoal on paper, 17½ x 31 inches; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

February Thaw, 1920, watercolor on paper, 17 15/16 x 27 15/16 inches; Brooklyn Museum, New York

Snow Patterns, 1920, watercolor on paper, 15½ x 31½ inches; Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State, New York

Note: In his journal dated 1919, Charles Burchfield describes:

Winter dawn is like something calm & self contained – down on the hill above the factories – The smoke goes up from a hundred chimneys into the quiet air; straight up then bends suddenly, eastwards – It forms a brown veil at this height and hangs motionless over the town; from the factories & railroads comes an exciting roar of machinery; that complements the steady up-pouring of smoke – There is romance at every angle.[1]

Speaking about Burchfield’s house pictures of 1918–1920, art critic and scholar Michael D. Hall proposes that “rather than being casual signs of artistic transition, these works collectively signal a conscious effort on Burchfield’s part to address the emergent Modernism redefining American art around him in the second and third decades of the 20^th century.”[2]

[1] Charles Burchfield, Journals, December 22, 1919, accessed https://burchfieldpenney.org/about/news/article:charles-e-burchfield-em-journals-em-december-22-1919/.

[2] Michael D. Hall, “Cones, Cubes, and Brooding Shacks: Charles Burchfield’s House Pictures 1918–1920,” in Charles Burchfield 1920: The Architecture of Painting (New York: DC Moore Gallery, 2009), 12.