Noontide in Late May
Charles Burchfield
CHARLES BURCHFIELD, 1917. WATERCOLOR AND PENCIL ON PAPER.
On the back of this painting, Burchfield describes his intentions to "interpret a child’s impression of noon-tide in late May—The heat of the sun streaming down & rosebushes making the air drowsy with their perfume.” This drowsiness is apt, the painting is alive with the intoxication of spring, a scene of vivid imagination seen through sun drenched eyes. Like so many of his contemporaries, Burchfield found nature an exhilarating subject, and painted a series of works depicting the seasons, of which this is one. His intention was not to document the world, but capture the mood of it with a youthful fascination, and recreate his childhood adoration for the gardens he spent many hours in. This work is of his neighbours backyard in Salem, Ohio, and was painted after an unhappy sojourn in New York City. It is perhaps the return to a rural, natural world after the imposing urbanity that charges this painting with such vitality, joy, and exuberance.