During the winter I had found online the link to a small museum in the town of Salem, where the much acclaimed watercolorist, Charles Burchfield resided as a youth and teenager. It was the images from his rural home, the surrounding woods, neighboring houses and public buildings that inspired him to sketch and paint in watercolor and inks. I arrived at the frame house with the small front porch and saw the OPEN sign in the window. I entered and was greeted from a back room by a man who introduced himself as Dick. He was delighted to have a guest for the afternoon and began guiding me through the downstairs rooms.
Dick Wootten has retired from his career as a music critic for the former Cleveland Press. However, he is the dedicated president of the Charles Ephraim Burchfield Society and can relate anecdotes and quotes from Burchfield’s journals and diary entries. Dick is a perfect interpreter of CEB’s wit, literary passions and unique style. Within the first few minutes, he told that a documentary film maker is making a film about Burchfield and will film in Buffalo and Salem. Even when Burchfield took a job designing wall paper patterns at the M.H. Birge & Sons Company in Buffalo and moved his family, his compositions still illustrated his memories of the Salem landscapes and streets. He had a prominent role in the early 20th century arts community and was a close colleague of Edward Hopper. However, he did not like the New York or any large city. His fondness continued for the small rural town of Eastern OH where he was happiest.
The Burchfield household at 867 E. 4th Street included Alice Murphy Burchfield who had left her alcoholic, undependable husband and took her children to reside in her hometown of Salem. Salem has a tradition of strong women, hosting the first Women’s Rights Convention out of New York State, which took place in April 1850. Alice included her mother and brother in the house and encouraged her children’s creativity at writing, drawing and performing. Exposed plaster walls show the cartoon drawings of sons Fred, Joe and Charles. The oldest son James remained unmarried and in the house to care for his mother.
The house has only one original small floral painting by Burchfield in it, but large color reproductions cover the walls of each room. Dick and staff have matched the scenes in the paintings with the views from the doors and windows, so that a visitor can see what Charles saw in planning a composition. His eye and imagination become the guide to the visitor in the room. The windows in the back of the house show the reconstructed garden and backyard landscaping. This has been planted to include all the same flowers and grape arbor that the Burchfields cultivated.
CEB was valedictorian of his 1911 high school class. Funny, staged photos of Charles and the antics of him and friends show the light heartedness of their parties in the E. 4th Street house. Charles spent the next four years as a prized student at Cleveland’s School of Art and the Homestead’s website provides statements about his instructors and colleagues. http://www.burchfieldhomestead.com/observations.html He entered the army where he designed camouflage material for uniforms. He invented an original style of painting representational street scenes, emphasizing the weather and natural elements of the day or night. It was at the school that he decided to become a professional artist. His later paintings incorporated inner fantasies, a more abstract symbolic use of trees and insects that take on the appearance of animated cartoon creatures. I immediately thought of his possible influence on the graphic images of Charles Addams and Theodore Geisel.
A mission desk is the only original piece of furniture that was given to the society but Dick Wootten built a matching bookcase to house the collection of books read by Charles and his family during the years before he married. A woman whom he dated claimed that their relationship never developed to a serious courtship because Charles was so attached to his mother, siblings and their family life. After a visit to some of the adjoining buildings that are now owned by the Burchfield Society, I walked around the town and its historic district. I was impressed with an empty lot and sign declaring that a research resource library will be built there as an extension to Salem’s Historical Museum.
My drives in the countryside also remind me of my close family and our rural road trips. I’m fond of the JCT junction signs as those were my brother Joel’s initials. Our mother, Sylvia Shiff, grew up in a small Ohio town and she loved to abandon the Cleveland suburbs on weekends to visit towns like her home of Fostoria. I drove back to Cuyahoga County via Berlin Lake, along Route 14 through various counties, a couple associated with the early life of another famous Ohioan, Clark Gable.
He also grew up with one parent and lived with relatives and friends. Although Gable was born in Cadiz, he began school in Hopedale. In 1856 George Armstrong Custer graduated from Hopedale College, prior to moving on to West Point Academy. Along the road I saw a sign “Custer was Sioux’d!” Gable’s father William and stepmother bought a farm near Yale, OH in 1917 and Clark, at 17 years old resided there that summer. He eventually worked at two tire and rubber companies in Akron. His attendance at plays at the Akron Music Hall convinced him of his desire to become an actor.
Good read! I had actually never looked up images of Burchfield's work. It's really unique and amazing. Very cartoony and psychedelic too. Reminds me of that lady's scractchboard work we saw near Cedar and Lee.
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