Charles Burchfield Home and Studio

Charles Burchfield Home and Studio
Interactive map of Charles Burchfield Home and Studio
42°51′21″N 78°45′06″W / 42.8558°N 78.7517°W / 42.8558; -78.7517
TypeHouse and artist's studio
Location3574 Clinton Street, West Seneca, New York, U.S.
History
BuiltHouse built c. 1880 - Studio built 1928
Site notes
OwnerPrivate

The Charles Burchfield Home and Studio is a house and detached painting studio in the Gardenville section of West Seneca, New York, United States, and the former residence of the American watercolorist Charles E. Burchfield (1893–1967), who lived and worked there from 1925 until his death.[1] His biographer John I. H. Baur wrote that virtually all of Burchfield's mature work was made in the studio, apart from the watercolors he painted outdoors, and that the house and yard, variously transformed, were themselves the subjects of a number of his works.[2]: 128 

Both buildings survive. The property has remained in private hands and is opened to the public on occasion.[3][4]

Since 1998 the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, which holds the largest collection of the artist's work, has maintained a permanent re-creation of the studio as part of its displays, and in 2013 it mounted an exhibition devoted to the building.[5][1]

Description

The house is a small two-story frame dwelling, built about 1880.[6][7] It stands on a narrow lot, about 34 feet wide and 449 feet deep.[7][8][3]

The studio, known in the literature on Burchfield as the Gardenville studio, stands halfway down the backyard. Baur described it as a small building scarcely the size of a one-car garage, which was later enlarged.[2]: 128  It is fitted with north-facing skylights and was designed for year-round use.[1] The custom six-panel skylight dormer lights the painting area.[8] The front room was lined with plywood shelves on which Burchfield stored thousands of studies. Photographs of the interior taken in 1955 and in the 1960s show framed and unframed watercolors stored in vertical shelf-slots and his supplies arranged on a worktable. He did not hang other artists' work on the walls, and the spare space held one of his own framed watercolors, arrangements of dried flowers, and the mounted specimens he called his studio companions, a stuffed owl and a stuffed crow.[9]: 12, 55  He occasionally drew or painted them. Mounted specimens from the studio, among them two crows and a snowy owl, are now in the permanent collection of the Burchfield Penney Art Center.[5][10]: 678  Burchfield built an addition to the studio in the 1930s or early 1940s.[9]: 76  Further small outbuildings were joined to it in 1959 and 1960, adding space for painting, for storing finished work, and for making picture frames.[8][11]

The grounds as Burchfield described them from a bench outside the studio included vegetable beds of tomatoes and onions, cannas and orange day lilies, a young birch, and plots the children kept beneath the pine trees, with the garage and house standing behind.[10]: 52  In April 1935 he recorded transplanting valerian, ever-blooming bleeding hearts, daphne, phlox and rose bushes into the back and side gardens in order to open a wide lawn behind the garage.[12]

History

Burchfield and his wife Bertha moved to 3574 Clinton Street in April 1925, having previously lived at two addresses in Buffalo. They raised five children at the house, and he remained there until his death.[10]: 715 

The studio was built in September 1928. In the summer of 1930 it was shifted further back on the lot and set on a concrete foundation.[8] Beyond providing a place to paint, it was where Burchfield sorted and distilled the sketches and notes he made in the field and worked out his approach to each finished picture.[1] In a journal entry of November 17, 1933 he wrote that he hoped the studio would be "hallowed by large adventurous thoughts" and set apart from the banalities of ordinary life.[5]

The earliest recorded description of the studio comes from a visit in January 1929 by the collectors Edward and Grace Root, accompanied by Harry Yates, who recalled being taken out of the back door to a little "hen-house studio", neat and tidy, from which Burchfield pulled out folio after folio of work. The early watercolors he showed them that afternoon led to two events in his career: Frank Rehn became his dealer, and the Museum of Modern Art devoted an exhibition to those works the following year.[9]: 12, 56  The studio received many visitors after Burchfield began painting full time later that year, but he soon restricted access, thereafter admitting few people and limiting it even for his own children and grandchildren.[9]: 79  In 1955 John I. H. Baur became the first scholar given extensive access to the material held there, in preparation for the retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art the following year.[9]: 68 

Around 1933 Burchfield began to question his methods, writing to his patron Edward Root that one of his greatest faults had been to depend almost entirely on studio work and that he had ceased to take fresh impressions of nature at first hand. He resolved instead to paint directly in front of his subject, after which, he said, his everyday surroundings were transformed.[2]: 178 

From the mid-1950s failing health increasingly confined Burchfield to the house and studio, and the material stored there allowed him to continue working when he could no longer sketch outdoors.[9]: 68  He was painting regularly in the studio until the morning of January 9, 1967. He died the following day, having collapsed while eating lunch with his wife at a restaurant near the house.[13][6] Bertha Burchfield continued to live there until her own death.[2]: 128  The contents of the studio were cleared and preserved after his death. More than six hundred watercolors, finished and unfinished, together with drawings and a large collection of folders, portfolios, sketchbooks and scrapbooks, were inventoried and sent to his dealer, the Frank Rehn Gallery in New York. Much of that material is now the property of the Charles E. Burchfield Foundation.[9]: 12, 14 

The property has remained in private hands since, and is opened to the public on occasion, including for BurchFest, an annual arts festival held in West Seneca since 2023.[3][4]

The property in Burchfield's work

Burchfield's own backyard supplied a good part of his material.[2]: 177  As he grew older he spent more time, particularly in winter, watching the landscape from the house, and the backyard became the subject of many drawings and watercolors.[14]: 27  He used the fence on the property repeatedly as a subject, remarking to his dealer Frank Rehn on how many times he had already painted it, and naming six works in which he considered it prominent and indispensable.[2]: 177 

The 1997 travelling retrospective The Paintings of Charles Burchfield: North by Midwest, organized by the Columbus Museum of Art and shown there, at the Burchfield Penney Art Center and at the National Museum of American Art, was arranged in four thematic sections, one of which was titled "Views from the House and Studio".[15][16] The accompanying volume includes discussion of the specific houses and views Burchfield painted in Salem and Gardenville.[15][17]

Selected works associated with the property include the following.

  • Cannas and Studio, also recorded as Canna Bed (1931). The studio seen behind the bed of cannas planted beside it. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, as a promised gift.[10]: 52 [18]
  • Garden House (c. 1931). Identified by Baur as a subject taken from Burchfield's own backyard. Collection unknown.[2]: 183 [19]
  • Winter Bouquet (1933). A still life arranged in the studio window. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[10]: 678 [20][21]
  • Rainy Day (1935). An interior of the house, showing the artist's son Charles Arthur reading with his toys at his feet. Private collection.[11]
  • View of Garden Plants beyond Fence (1937). Garden plants seen beyond a fence. Karen and Kevin Kennedy Collection.[12]
  • December Storm (1941 to 1960). Sunlight breaking through storm clouds above houses visible from the backyard. Burchfield Penney Art Center.[22]
  • Blackbirds in the Snow (1941 to 1945). A winter view across the backyard toward blackbirds feeding on the remains of the garden, with the studio at the left and houses beyond. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.[23][24]
  • The Studio (1942). The rear of the studio and its northern skylights. Burchfield Penney Art Center.[1]
  • Budding Poplar Branches (1942). A Carolina poplar and the chicken house on the property immediately to the east, treated as an outdoor study in the manner of a still life. Dayton Art Institute.[10]: 695 [25]
  • Winter Sunlight and Shadow (1946). The corner of the garage and the front of the studio, with Orchard Avenue beyond.[8]
  • Winter Light, Backyard (1949 to 1960). The view from the house, with the corner of the studio at the left. Begun in 1949 and revised periodically over the following decade. Whitney Museum of American Art.[14]: 27 [26]
  • East Wind and Winter Sun (1951). Identified as the rear of the studio and the house seen from the back of the lot. Baltimore Museum of Art, Edward Joseph Gallagher III Memorial Collection.[8][27]
  • Still-Life in Winter (1951). A still life arranged in the studio, incorporating the mounted snowy owl Burchfield kept there, with pine foliage and a sunflower. Smithsonian American Art Museum.[10]: 678 [28]
  • Birch Tree and Houses (date unknown). Tentatively identified by Baur as a backyard subject.[2]: 183 
  • Study of Thistle (1961). One of a series of studies of two large thistle plants growing in the backyard just outside the studio door. Whitney Museum of American Art.[14]: 27 

Studio re-creation at the Burchfield Penney Art Center

The Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, which holds the largest collection of Burchfield's work, maintains a permanent scale re-creation of the Gardenville studio. Designed in 1998, it represents the studio as it appeared in the artist's final years and is installed beside the galleries devoted to his paintings.[5] The re-creation incorporates objects donated by the foundation, by members of Burchfield's family, and by former neighbours.[5]

In 2013 the museum mounted an exhibition devoted to the building, Charles E. Burchfield: The Studio, presented by the Charles E. Burchfield Foundation.[1]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Charles E. Burchfield: The Studio". Burchfield Penney Art Center. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Baur, John I. H. (1982). The Inlander: Life and Work of Charles Burchfield, 1893-1967. Newark: University of Delaware Press. ISBN 0-87413-186-3. OCLC 7173514. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 "The House That Painted Buffalo: Charles Burchfield's Home & Studio". Buffalo Rising. September 4, 2025. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  4. 1 2 "Charles Burchfield Gardenville District". West Seneca Chamber of Commerce. June 2, 2023. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 "Charles E. Burchfield's Gardenville Studio". Burchfield Penney Art Center. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  6. 1 2 May, Stephen (February–March 1997). "Charles Burchfield, the Great Watercolorist". American Heritage. Vol. 48, no. 1. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  7. 1 2 "Real property record, 3574 Clinton Street, West Seneca, New York". Erie County Real Property Tax Services. SWIS 146800, SBL 124.20-9-28. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "The Studio". The Charles Burchfield Home & Studio. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Maciejunes, Nannette V.; Hendricks, Norine S. (1997). "Nurturing His Muse: The Archives of Charles Burchfield's Creative Life". American Art Journal. 28 (1/2): 6–81. doi:10.2307/1594612. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Burchfield, Charles (1993). Townsend, J. Benjamin (ed.). Charles Burchfield's Journals: The Poetry of Place. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-0991-0. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  11. 1 2 Weekly, Nancy (2014). "Rainy Day". Burchfield Penney Art Center. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  12. 1 2 "Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, April 25, 1935". Burchfield Penney Art Center. April 25, 2022. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  13. ↑ "Charles Burchfield Dies at 73; Artist Known for Water-Colors". The New York Times. January 11, 1967. p. 25. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  14. 1 2 3 Sims, Patterson (1980). Charles Burchfield: A Concentration of Works from the Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  15. 1 2 Smith, Roberta (December 26, 1997). "Pinning Down an Artist Who Set Nature Aflutter". Art Review. The New York Times. p. E48. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  16. ↑ "The Paintings of Charles Burchfield: North by Midwest". Burchfield Penney Art Center. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  17. ↑ Maciejunes, Nannette V.; Hall, Michael D., eds. (1997). The Paintings of Charles Burchfield: North by Midwest. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with the Columbus Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-8109-3148-0.
  18. ↑ "Cannas and Studio". Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  19. ↑ "Garden House". Burchfield Penney Art Center. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  20. ↑ "Winter Bouquet". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  21. ↑ "Burchfield's Souvenir". Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. December 2013. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  22. ↑ "December Storm". Burchfield Penney Art Center. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  23. ↑ "Blackbirds in the Snow". Art Inventories Catalog, Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  24. ↑ "Blackbirds in the Snow". Walker Art Center. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  25. ↑ "Budding Poplar Branches". Dayton Art Institute. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  26. ↑ "Winter Light, Backyard". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  27. ↑ "Painting the Wind". Baltimore Museum of Art. February 2011. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  28. ↑ "Still-Life in Winter". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
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