Charles E. Burchfield: Autumn Leaves at Play

Autumn Leaves at Play (1950-59) was the featured masterwork in the Charles E. Burchfield Rotunda. Wooded ravines provided the perfect stage for the sights, sounds, and smells that Burchfield associated with the dynamics of changing seasons. Lent from a private collection, this animated painting beautifully illustrates iconic characteristics of the autumnal season. When he set out to start painting in 1950, Charles Burchfield wrote: "I worked on a theme that came to me last month — that of a woodland stream, swollen by a heavy fall shower, carrying gay colored leaves as it tumbled down a ravine over rocks and rotting logs. In the background I put a crescent shaped opening in the woods with brilliant sunshine beyond; and had shafts of sunlight slanting down thru the trees."

Studies from our museum’s Charles E. Burchfield Foundation Archives illustrate how the artist observed, transcribed and contrasted certain details to set into play kinetic energy.

Curator: Nancy Weekly, Head of Collections and the Charles Cary Rumsey Curator