Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

Burchfield began painting The Star just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Initially he had found it difficult to work, admitting a sense of “helplessness in the face of war.” On December 15, however, he started the composition for “’Christmas night’” — getting an excellent beginning,” but soon put it aside for finishing another time.

Two stately trees dominate the composition, their crisscrossed upper branches forming beautiful patterns in the sky.  Reaching out toward each other, they touch to create a Gothic arch. Midway between them a single evening star pierces a black cloud, which acts like a heavy eyelid opening from slumber. A giant iris casts a glance down to a youthful evergreen nestled between domestic dwellings where people follow their nightly routines.

With starlight illuminating its icy needles, the small tree, in its natural state, deserves Burchfield’s quiet reverence, more so than the nearby, indoor Christmas tree. Having acknowledged the merits of various religions and mythologies from around the world, and then accepting Lutheranism in the 1940s, Burchfield sometimes used Christian symbols in subtle subplots for paintings that also assert Nature itself as manifesting the spiritual.

- Nancy Weekly, Burchfield Scholar