Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

Hopper, Edward.  “Charles Burchfield: American,” Arts 14 (July 1928): 10:

            “We approach Burchfield’s satire, an element in the work that seems to be very important to most critics, and which they have made much of. We think it has been given undue prominence by them, except perhaps in the earlier works. The artist himself admits to some special hates in these, due to a rather unhappy period in his career.

            “We believe that the lyric quality which has always been present, more or less, will gradually dominate the satiric. This ironic attitude has also been changing to a more gentle humor; as in Promenade, the picture of the street with the enormous dogs following the little dog led by his mistress in seven-league arctics. In this, it is fun of a refreshing, unforced simplicity, and very American withal.

            “Satire crops out again in Civic Improvement, another street scene with men cutting down shade trees, whose dismembered limbs fall in agonized gestures in the road. The rather mild venom in this has not blinded his response to the beauty to be found in the thing.”

Kowsky, Francis R. "Delaware Avenue," in The Grand Avenue, pub. by Pomegranate Artbooks, 1994, p. 159. (also quoted in http://www.buffaloah.com/h/1928.html#1920 page by Chuck LaChiusa.

1924 / The Delaware Avenue Association (organized in 1923) succeeded in 1924 in having the city widen the avenue from Niagara Square almost up to North Street. The widening of the roadway from forty feet to sixty feet was accompanied by the laying of new sewer lines, the placement of traffic signals, and the installation at one-hundred-foot intervals of 1500-candle-power electric light standards. The modernization of the avenue, however, occasioned the destruction of most of the splendid elm trees that had lined the thoroughfare, two rows on each side, since even before Olmsted's day. The effort by many citizens both on and off the avenue —including artist Charles Burchfield, who had come to town in 1923 [1921] to work in the Birge wallpaper factory— to stay the massacre of the trees was to no avail. ... It was the first of many preservation battles that were doomed to fail in a city that, like many others, came to pride itself on the destruction of its distinctive charms in the name of jobs and progress.