William Sommer (1867-1949)

In 1996, William H. Robinson, then assistant curator at The Cleveland Museum of Art, wrote that “William Sommer and William Zorach were the most radical members of the Cleveland modernist movement.” Sommer had moved to Cleveland in 1907 to work at Otis Lithography, where a much younger Zorach, age 18, was serving as an apprentice. Sommer and Zorach were profoundly impressed with the brilliantly colored paintings Abel Warshawsky exhibited at the Rorimer–Brooks studios in the fall of 1910. That November, Zorach left for Paris, and Sommer became involved in the founding of two art organizations: the Cleveland “Secessionists” who were sympathetic to experimental art, and the Kokoon Klub, modeled somewhat after the New York Kit-Kat Club.

In March 1915, after seeing the five Zorach paintings on permanent display at the Kokoon Klub, Burchfield decided to meet ‘Big Bill Sommer’ and hopped the interurban trolley to Brandywine, about twenty miles south of Cleveland, where Sommer had recently established a studio in an abandoned schoolhouse. Burchfield was accompanied on this trip by William Eastman, Frank Wilcox, and Walter Heller—all members of the Kokoon Klub and junior instructors at the Cleveland School of Art.

Burchfield discovered that for several years Sommer and Zorach had been painting imaginative subjects charged with emotional intensity and brilliant fauvist color.  Sharing a common disdain for conventional art, they sought relief through noncommercial experiments with abstract color and imaginary subjects.  They believed art should explore dreams and the subconscious and aspired to convey feelings of emotional intensity and spiritual vitality in their paintings.

The Sommer watercolor painting, In the Valley—Brandywine, 1947, is a late work still utilizing the bright palette of theBerlinHeights style, although the aged paper has muted the effect of the colors. It is a view from Sommer’s home that Burchfield and others had visited.

Label text  by Nancy Weekly for Roots: Burchfield’s Early Subjects, Themes and Influences, October 30, 2004 - May 1, 2005