THE THREE TREES

 CHARLES E. BURCHFIELD

The Three Trees, 1932-46, watercolor on paper, 36" x 60"

JOURNALS: May 2, 1949

In Salem-High Street-great open fields with gigantic trees, elms, buttonwoods and maples, with blue-jays flying about - 

Burchfield notes often in his journals that he was "near the Three Trees, sketching...

...when he heard that two of the trees had been felled by a tornado in 1925 he "was seized with a desire to recreate them in a picture".

The Three Trees (Salem, Ohio), Pen and Ink with wash over graphite

Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art

I really appreciate the continuous line that connects the three trees along the top of the "spreading branch canopy". It is such a direct way to express that things in nature are interconnected and also creates a movement, like a wave, or maybe a ripple of wind ruffling the leaves in a certain direction.

The way he drew in the sun embraced by the lower branches of the two trees on the left with clouds and rays of sunshine lighting up the landscape in the distance gives a context to the trees.

Chestnut Trees, (Near Little Beaver Creek, east of Salem, Ohio), 1920

Pen and ink wash & pencil

"Three chestnut trees, overlooking the valley of the Little Beaver. What glorious trees these vanished chestnuts were - with their shaggy deeply sculptured trunks, and waxy green luxuriant foliage, now truly myths of a bygone era."

Chestnut Trees, 1916, Gouache, watercolor and pencil on paper