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Preview image of work. watercolor over graphite on off-white wove paper,  From Clingman's Dome, No. 2 9861

1986.118

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From Clingman's Dome, No. 2

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Artist

Charles Ephraim Burchfield (Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio, 4/9/1893 - 1/10/1967, West Seneca, New York)

Title

From Clingman's Dome, No. 2

Creation Date

1915

Century

20th century

Dimensions

19 1/4 in. x 14 5/8 in. (48.9 cm x 37.2 cm)

Object Type

watercolor

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

watercolor over graphite on off-white wove paper

Credit Line

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. MacDonald

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

1986.118

Throughout his career, Charles Burchfield infused his renderings of the natural world with rhapsodic fantasy and vibrational energy. Burchfield was still a student at the Cleveland School of Art when he painted this watercolor from atop Clingman’s Dome, the highest mountain in Tennessee. During this period of self-definition, the young artist recalled filling his sketchbooks with “hundreds and hundreds of studies of clouds, trees, fields, flowers and grasses, moonrises, sunsets and storms.” In this composition, Burchfield emphasizes a dramatic sky. Splashes of blue and gray define portions of the white paper into booming cloud formations. About his art, he later explained, “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.”