Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, August 19, 1942

Yesterday and today, very warm humid weather, the air full of thick bluish white haze, the sky a brassy yellow. For an hour or so both morning and evening the sun a glowing ball of red, and at mid-day like melted brass, or gold. Sunlight on the ground, or on the other objects, pale, and of a pinkish gold cast; the shadows likewise pale and [bluish] green.

The early part of the afternoon I spent in wandering here and there, vainly trying to find some subject that would typify the season, the kind of weather & the particular kind of day. It was not until late afternoon that I found my subject, a white house with a tall symmetrical maple, surrounded by a field of dead grass, with the golden afternoon sunlight behind and a little to the right.

I painted until the sun was low in the west, a red ball, in the thickening mists. Then I drove eastward, and parked under a large maple, with a wide valley to the south, a hilly pasture land crowned by the low woods to the north. I enjoyed the evening as I can only after having worked hard beforehand. As daylight slowly subsided, the half-moon became clearer low in the south, glowing with a pale brassy color. From all side came the sounds of insects, black crickets, tru-crickets, green grasshoppers. - At twilight I took a walk up the hill. All the time I was thinking that I must absorb to the full because the time was at hand when I could not get out as frequently. And on account of this I believe I became more acutely sensitive to the scene around me.

I drove home by going straight westward to the Springville Road and thence by way of Chestnut Ridge. Here I parked a moment by the road, turned off my lights, and listened to [katydid] chorus, which was going full and strong, imparting to the woods nearby, with their black cave-like interiors a mysterious, a sinister quality. Low in the southwest, the moon had become a tarnished old gold color, in a thick brownish violet sky.

Charles E. Burchfield, August 19, 1942