Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

Street Scene started as an almost comical urban scene of commercial buildings on Genesee Street with their quirky trade signage, like a giant tooth. But the tenor of painting changed from 1940 to 1947, due to Burchfield’s problems with lumbago and “the rapid turning of the war from bad to worse,” so he added a central figure who laboriously pulls a heavy cart as dark clouds loom overhead.