The City
Charles Burchfield
American, 1893–1967
1916
This watercolor and gouache on paper presents an industrial city seen as mood and movement rather than topography—Burchfield translates light, smoke, and motion into flattened silhouettes and rhythmic white marks.
Your eye is pulled from a warm row of yellow, blue‑roofed houses in the lower left across a vast, misty expanse of layered gray rooftops, interrupted by diagonal white strokes and a thin pale‑yellow horizon that gives the whole scene a shimmering, atmospheric hush.
Dating from 1916, the work is an early example of Burchfield’s modernist practice of turning weather and sound into visual shorthand, expanding what watercolor could express and helping forge a more subjective, American landscape tradition.
Medium
Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper
Dimensions
13 7/8 x 19 7/8" (35.3 x 50.5 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Accession
42.1935
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
