Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, January 10, 1920

The “January Spring” with its exciting afterglows and smoking chimneys and wide-roaring trains has come and gone and now the earth is shut in by a low dark sky; the trees heavily coated with ice stand like gigantic feathers and crackle in the wind—all horizons are an ominous dark gray— What a wonderful thing that an expected season never fails us — this midwinter Spring, so fleeting and elusive, that we fear another year will not bring it— yet it always comes.

Charles E. Burchfield, January 10, 1920

In his Painting Index, Burchfield wrote: “FEBRUARY THAW”: COMPOSITION – BASED ON SALEM, OHIO MATERIAL (ORIGINAL TITLE – “JANUARY THAW” – WHEN FIRST EXHIBITED IT WAS MIS-TITLED AS ABOVE, AND ALLOWED TO STAND, ALTHO IT LACKS SIGNIFICANCE