Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

Once your eyes stray from the bedraggled tree stranded in the center of a muddy lump of earth surrounded by fetid, icy water, you become aware of smothering, black clouds in the sky. Industrial smoke in the distance confirms that the bleak scene is far from Burchfield’s beloved woods. Slyly, he cast the source of this pollution to the side. What at first seems like a block of factory buildings on the right is actually a receding cascade of train cars in the Salem, Ohio railroad yards. The smoke-belching locomotive speeds nearly out of sight, but its plumes of ash and coal dust oppress the land it leaves behind. 1920 was the year Burchfield produced “indictments against ugliness and injustice” that permeated nearby towns devoted to coal mining and coke smelting. In March he wrote about a haunting soundtrack to the landscape: “A screaming freight-whistle opens up the far stretching hills to the south; a hoarse passenger train whistle comes out of the West –” (Nancy Weekly)