Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

In 1930, Charles Burchfield painted a double portrait of his daughters Martha and Catherine sitting on a log. Thirty years later, he decided that each daughter should have her own portrait, so he sliced the painting in half, remounted the original, and added paper so he could expand the landscape setting. Recomposed from the right side, Catherine is seated on the log holding a bouquet of bright yellow dandelions. In the distance stand a flowering chestnut tree and pink dogwoods. Recomposed from the left side, Martha is seated beneath a flowering dogwood tree holding a swamp rose mallow. (Nancy Weekly, Charles E. Burchfield: Family Tree, 2014)