Oct. 23 (Thurs.) – Nov. 6 (Thurs.)
The usual period of getting over the effects of an exhibition and a trip; trying to pick up my life here again, and get re-oriented so that I can start painting again. I have not really been so, since the first trip to N.Y. for Carnegie.
The first day home (Oct. 23) I slept most of the day, getting up at late afternoon to drive over (with B & A-) [Bertha and Arthur] to meet the girls, home for three days’ vacation.
One day spent in town searching, with little luck, for chinrests – four girls to movie.)
Remounting & enlarging some pictures: —
Study of Bertha (1937) reading from 21x22 to 23x33 —
Up-rooted Tree (1920-) from 21x30 to 27x41
Storm over Irondale (1920) from 26x30 to 28x40
March Day at Gowanda (1924) from 23½x26 to 26x36.
Finished work on these Wed. (Nov. 5) – “The Up-rooted Tree” seems to suggest possibilities for a much bigger theme than simply the study of a fallen tree.
Wednesday was a beautiful, Indian Summer day, one on which the sun always seems to be in the south, from early morning to late afternoon – The mild sunlight, enveloping Hengert’s bleached corn-patch, and the yellowing poplars beyond, fills the studio with a mellow golden glow.
I finished my work in the studio, and spent the rest of the afternoon in the yard; I potted a few plants for Bertha, and got Arthur to put in his spring bulbs, that had been dug up last Spring –
The pale afternoon sun disappeared early in a slowly rising bank of blue-gray mist; at the same time, a raw wind from the east sprang up.
On Monday evening Frank [Rehn] called up to ask my advice on two offers he had received on two pictures - $500 for “Old Barn at Sunset” priced at $750, $200 for “Glare of Afternoon Sunlight (1917) priced at $300. I told him to accept & he agreed we should.
He said he had just come from the gallery, where he had been detained by “people from Boston” (Museum?) – that they had given him too many cock-tails, and he was half-lit.
Today – a dark rainy day, with wind still from the East. Yellow leaves continually falling from the poplar row over our yard, as if the trees were dissolving in the rain.
P.M. B & I to Buffalo to do a little shopping – some for Christmas.
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[Burchfield bracketed the remaining entry with red pencil.]
[Last night about 9:30, we were startled by a sharp explosion; — we could not agree on the direction whence it came. Bertha thought it might be gas in the furnace; while I thought it came from Bengert’s garage. An examination all around revealed nothing.
Today’s paper reported it as a natural phenomenon — described aby a physicist as “a bronchial cough” of “Mother earth He called it a brontide (which literally translated would be thunder-tide or -wave. Its cause has never been explained. He said that the Indians had observed it, and called it the “death-drum” – I have never before experienced; or even heard of it.
I like to think of it in connection with the season – of the retreat of life into the black earth; and the approach of winter.]
--Charles E. Burchfield, October 23-November 6, 1941