The Sun Through the Trees
Charles Burchfield (American, 1893–1967)
June 30, 1917
- Medium
- Watercolor and opaque watercolor
- Classification
- Drawing
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 55.9 x 45.7 cm (22 x 18 in.)
- Culture
- America
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
While sketching in the Ohio countryside in 1916, Burchfield began to represent the sun as a dramatic orb. This sheet is part of a group in which the artist suggested stained glass windows using trees and the sun. Here, branches reach toward the sun to form a dark, halo-like frame filled by sunlight that diffuses into an array of color. By combining landscape with religious iconography, Burchfield suggested the divine influence he saw in nature.
