[from “New York Trip” Monday, March 8-Friday, March 12, 1954]
March 10 – Wednesday –
The hotel ‘flooded’ with some women’s club convention – the dining hall over-flowing; so we set out to get breakfast outside. Everyplace closed, being ‘night’ spots. Eventually we found a cafeteria at 7th and 51st Street —
The Jury meeting followed much the same pattern as usual (Zigrosser, Maldarelli, Speicher, Young & myself) – It was good to be back –
Lunches at Forno’s (Spanish Restaurant) both days. These very enjoyable – good food and excellent conversation. (One of the things I like to do in N.Y. is to fill up on raw oysters). –
The second day – somehow we got onto the subject of press-notices and Gene [Speicher] told us about his first notice. He was working as a bundle wrapper for Browning King & Co. in Buffalo – He sent a picture to the Art Gallery where it was exhibited – Headline in the paper ‘Clothing Misfit succeeds in Art” – So I told the remark Du Bois ??? once made about my work ‘Burchfield is only Hopper on a rainy day’ –
--Charles E. Burchfield, March 10, 1954
[Nancy Weekly: American artist Guy Pène Du Bois (1884-1958) was not the author of a negative comparison with Hopper; it was Lewis Mumford (1895-1990). The jury colleagues were: Carl Zigrosser (1891-1975), American art historian, curator emeritus of prints and drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Oronzio Maldarelli (1892-1963), American, born Naples, Italy, sculptor and painter; Eugene Speicher (1883-1962), American, born in Buffalo, NY, portrait, landscape and still-life painter, Rehn Gallery colleague; and Mahonri Young (1877-1957), American sculptor and artist, founder of the American Water Color Society.]