Artist’s home preserved

By D.A. Wilkinson

One of the artist’s paintings recently sold for $1.3 million.

SALEM — Visitors to the childhood home of Charles Burchfield can look outside and see the buildings that inspired his art.

Richard Wooten, the president of The Burchfield Homestead Society, said the structures captured by Salem’s famous painter have changed very little in the last 90 years.

The late artist, who also kept journals, wrote, “The view from my bedroom window was the entrance to a romantic land.”

Burchfield had a window and a skylight in his second-story bedroom to aid his work. But he painted scenes from both stories and all sides of the frame structure at 867 East Fourth St.

The Homestead has placed prints of his work beside the windows so visitors can see his work and its inspiration.

Wooten, the former art critic of the Cleveland Press, came up with the idea.

“One nice thing about small towns is that there was never any urban renewal,” Wooten said.

Outdoor latrines in the neighborhood are long gone, but Wooten said otherwise little has changed.

The Homestead is temporarily closed to visitors while repairs are made to a small house to the west that was donated. The building will contain restrooms for visitors and will be used for storage.

Atty. Fred Naragon, a member of the society, said that the work should be done in about four weeks.

Burchfield, of course, painted the building and named the painting “The Night Wind.”

Wooten said, “He wanted to give you a sense of the force of nature. He would stare at a tree for three hours. He was a student of nature, like Henry David Thoreau.”

Burchfield, to many, “was a regionalist painter,” Wooten said. “He always resented that.”

He was the first artist to have a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art when it opened in 1930.

Burchfield’s art is still hot. A painting, “Dream of Butterflies,” was sold by Sotheby’s in New York City in 2007 for $1.3 million to an undisclosed bidder. It’s the top price to date for a Burchfield painting, Wooten said.

The Burchfield Homestead plans to expand its activities through local programs and ties to the Burchfield-Penney Art Center in Buffalo.

Burchfield left Salem to teach art at Buffalo State College in Buffalo, N.Y., where an art center was named for him. A donor, Charles Rand Penney, left the center 183 of Burchfield’s paintings in the 1990s.

The center now has the world’s largest collection of Burchfield’s art. It was renamed the Burchfield-Penney Art Center and is undergoing an expansion that is expected to be completed sometime this fall.

Wooten said that Homestead officials may try to go to the opening of the facility.

In the meantime, the Homestead plans to let people see some of the other buildings and natural areas that Burchfield painted that, like his neighborhood, haven’t changed.

Wooten wants to use the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce’s trolley for the trip. A computer or posters will be used to show the paintings.

People can also visit www.burchfieldhomestead.com, which has an interactive map that shows other paintings Burchfield painted from his home.

wilkinson@vindy.com