Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, September 2-3, 1942

…Evening – B & M & I to the Art School Tea.  Meet there Mrs. Ritchie (wife of the new director of the Albright Gallery), the Eliots, and the Soyer’s — Made arrangements for the Soyers to come out tomorrow —

Sept. 3 — It is my habit to fear the making of acquaintance with new people, and probably if no one else ever made first overtures I would never meet anyone. So it was with the visit of the Soyer’s —but I need have had no apprehension. I liked them both —Soyer was all artist, and interested so completely in pictures. He said his visit here was the happiest day of his stay in Buffalo, which I can well understand, for there is not an artist in Buffalo who is completely an artist — The most are dilettanti, more interested in social life, or the politics of “art circles”.

[Burchfield refers to the wife of Albright Art Gallery Director Andrew Ritchie, and artists Isaac Soyer, Philip C. Elliott, and Virginia Cuthbert Elliott]

Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, September 2-3, 1942