Skip to main content
Advanced Search
Street Vista in Winter
On View
Not on view
Object number1961/2.281

Street Vista in Winter

Artist (American, 1893-1967)
Date1957-1960
Mediumwatercolor on paper
Dimensionsframe: 1 3/8 in. × 35 in. × 52 in. (3.5 × 88.9 × 132.1 cm)
mat (sight): 32 1/4 in. × 49 in. (81.9 × 124.5 cm)
image (sight): 26 × 43 in. (66 × 109.2 cm)
Credit LineGift of Mr. and Mrs. Donald S. Gilmore
Exhibition History"Twentieth Century American Art: Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Photography," KIA (Oct. 1 - Dec. 31, 1961). Exhibition unknown, University of Arizona (1965). "Paintings By American Masters: Fifth Anniversary Exhibition," KIA (Sept. 14 - Oct. 19, 1966). "The Nature of Charles Burchfield, A Memorial Exhibition," Munson-Williams Proctor Institute (Apr. 6 - May 31, 1970). "The Sites of a City: Charles Burchfield's Buffalo," Buffalo State University College (Sept. 3 - Oct. 31, 1976). "Michigan Masterpieces: Art from Public Collections," Grand Rapids Art Museum (June 28 - July 28, 1985), Flint Institute of Arts (Aug. 4 - Sept. 1, 1985), Kresge Art Museum (Sept. 15 - Oct. 13, 1985), Lee Hall Gallery at Northern Michigan University (Oct. 20 - Nov. 17, 1985), DIA (Dec. 9, 1985 - Jan. 26, 1986), KIA (Feb. 2 - Mar. 2, 1986), University of Michigan Museum of Art (Mar. 7 - Apr. 9, 1986), Muskegon Museum of Art (May 4 - June 1, 1986). (May not have been at all venues.) "Charles E. Burchfield: The Sacred Woods," Burchfield Art Center (Dec. 11, 1993 - Feb. 6, 1994), Hunter Museum of Art (Apr. 3 - May 22, 1994). "70 Years, 70 Works from the KIA Permanent Collection," KIA (Nov. 19, 1994 - Feb. 10, 1995). "The Paintings of Charles Burchfield: North by Midwest," Columbus Museum of Art (Mar. 23 - May 18, 1997); National Museum of American Art (Sept. 26, 1997 - Jan. 25, 1998). "Lasting Legacy: A Collection for Kalamazoo," Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, Michigan (Sep. 6, 2014 - Jan. 4, 2015). Label TextLook up this long stretch of road, deserted except for some cars and a few lighted windows. Count the trees until they become indistinct against the grey horizon. You can feel the chill in the air and hear the crunch of the snow. Growing up in Ohio, Charles Burchfield was certainly acquainted with the chilling greyness of a midwinter day. This expertly painted watercolor features Linwood Avenue in Buffalo, New York, but it could be any of hundreds of streets in America. Throughout his career, Charles Burchfield painted the American scene, usually directly from nature. He presented his symbolic and visionary ideas through sensitively observed depictions of light, motion, and sounds, using a private system of symbols and images within his paintings to express his personal spirituality. Thus a simple landscape could, in fact, be a complex and personal spiritual statement. An artist must paint not what he sees in nature, but what is there. To do so he must invent symbols, which if properly used, make his work seem even more real than what is in front of him. Charles Burchfield