Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

Following his honorable discharge from the U. S. Army at the end of World War I, Burchfield sought unusual subjects in caves and abandoned mines. Memory of a Dream may represent a dreamlike, nocturnal image of a swamp at the mouth of a cave, but the painting’s extraordinary, gloomy abstraction calls to mind the work of a modernist contemporary, Arthur Dove. Burchfield’s description of wandering through woods on the day after he painted Memory of a Dream gives perspective on the mood he wanted to convey: “The Pinehollow had a sad grandeur about its solitude; the stream roaring in the misty depths of its hollow was felt; a peter-bird sang after dusk, the fearful gloom of woods grabbed at the road; a bird call came from the … hill, like the rapid tapping on a hollow skull —” -- Nancy Weekly, 2007