TitleGoldenrod in November
Artist
Charles Burchfield
(American, 1893 - 1967)
Date1952
MediumWatercolor and gouache with charcoal on wove paper
DimensionsSheet size: 36 3/4 × 29 11/16 in.
Image size: 36 1/4 × 29 3/8 in.
Mat size: 40 × 32 in.
SignedSigned lower left: "CEB"
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, April 5, 1954
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number52-W
Label TextBurchfield was elected an Associate Member of the National Academy in 1952 under the category of watercolorist. In the early 1920s he began to receive acclaim for his work in the medium, and became one of the most celebrated watercolorists in the country. Burchfield occasionally added gouache and charcoal to his watercolors, or added strips of paper on the sides to expand them. In many of his watercolors of the 1950s, he was interested in capturing a sense of the nature and drama of the changing seasons--the cycle of bud, bloom and decay. Burchfield remarked: “I don’t have any real method that can be taught. . . . I work in any one of three different ways. I go out and paint directly from a subject – or use a subject to improvise; or I work, and then bring the work into the studio and complete it; or I sketch and then do the whole picture in the studio. I very seldom make a color sketch. . . . My method has changed gradually over the years, without my really knowing it. I used to complete one section of a picture and now I work all over. In a good picture, every stroke is conditioned by what you do in some other part of the picture.”
