1927
oil on canvas
22 x 32 in. (55.9 x 81.3 cm)
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Charles W. Goodyear Fund, 1927
Winter, East Liverpool is one of only eighteen extant oil and oil tempera paintings that Charles E. Burchfield created. The Burchfield Penney Art Center owns four. The artist preferred the watercolor medium with which he became an American master, utilizing unique methods that adapted some oil painting techniques (such as painting more dryly and in layers). This painting and the related watercolor Sun, Moon and Star (1920-55) draw their subject from trips Burchfield made in eastern Ohio to small industrial towns that characterized the country’s post-World War I, struggling way of life. — NW