Church Bells Ringing, Rainy Winter Night
Charles Burchfield (American, 1893–1967)
December 1917
- Medium
- watercolor and gouache over graphite on wove paper
- Classification
- Drawing
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 77.2 x 50 cm (30 3/8 x 19 11/16 in.); Secondary Support: 77.5 x 50 cm (30 1/2 x 19 11/16 in.)
- Culture
- America
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. Louise M. Dunn in memory of Henry G. Keller
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Burchfield considered this drawing among the greatest accomplishments of his “golden year.” This period followed a time of self-doubt and uncertainty: after graduating from the Cleveland School of Art, Burchfield enrolled in the National Academy of Design in New York City, but dropped out after one day, returning to Salem to work an office job. He painted inexhaustibly during his breaks and at night, depicting Salem and its environs in an increasingly abstract style.
Church Bells Ringing, Rainy Winter Night shows the spire of Salem’s Baptist church rising up between two houses. Burchfield hoped to express his powerful childhood fear of the bell’s ominous ring—which he described as “a dull roar . . . dying slowly & with a growl.” Hearing it on stormy winter nights, he huddled in his bed and calmed himself by thinking of Christmas, a practice suggested by the tree visible through a window in the drawing. Burchfield carefully refined the composition throughout the sketches seen in this gallery.
The drawing’s mood is conveyed through gray tones and the buildings’ hulking forms. Burchfield also created a complex language of symbols entitled “Conventions for Abstract Thoughts,” that…
