Surrounded: Sampling Burchfield's Wallpaper

Charles Burchfield is best known today for his fantastic watercolor landscapes, but from November 1921 to August 1929, he worked at the M. H. Birge & Sons Company, eventually becoming one of their best wallpaper designers. This exhibition features works from the Burchfield Penney Art Center collection including color variations of wallpapers (known as colorways) produced with rollers, original painted designs for wallpapers and coordinating fabrics known as cretonnes. Panels from the complex, block-printed scenic wallpaper, Country Life and the Hunt (c. 1922-1924) that had been removed from its original installation in a home in New England are also part of this fascinating exhibition.

Related in an adjacent gallery, Charles Burchfield: Dawn Over the City is an in-depth look at Burchfield's watercolor from the Arkell Museum collection. For the first time, Dawn Over the City was exhibited side-by-side with drawings and watercolors from the Burchfield Penney Art Center collection that helped form and directly relate to it.

Nancy Weekly, Burchfield Penney Art Center's Head of Collections and The Charles Cary Rumsey Curator, gave a gallery talk during the opening reception of June 26, 2015.