Charles Ephraim Burchfield (American, 1893-1967) "May Wind and Hay"

Provenance Note: Frederic P. "Nick" Norton (1935-2025) was a respected Western New York attorney, civic leader, and devoted arts patron whose lifelong commitment to culture enriched the Buffalo region. A Dartmouth College graduate (Class of 1957) and Yale Law School alumnus, Norton practiced law locally for five decades at Norton, Radin, Hoover, Freedman, serving corporations, municipalities, and families. He was deeply engaged in civic and cultural life, holding leadership and board roles with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, among others. Since 1961, Norton served Rotary in numerous leadership roles including president, board member, and district governor, and is a Paul Harris Fellow with four sapphires, a benefactor, and a recipient of the Rotary Foundation’s Citation for Meritorious Service.
A dedicated arts patron inspired by his father, he began collecting in 1956 with his passions supported and complimented by his wife, Alexandra Barnes "Alex" Norton, through the years. A passionate and disciplined collector for more than fifty years, Norton assembled an extensive collection of prints, drawings, paintings, and sculpture. His connoisseurship was guided by intellectual curiosity and a commitment to supporting artists and institutions. Between 1998 and 2000, he gifted more than 500 prints to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, underscoring his belief in public access to art. They dedicated the F. Paul Norton and Frederic P. Norton Family Prints and Drawings Study Center in 1999. Works remaining from the Norton estate reflect decades of informed acquisition and cultural stewardship, offering collectors a view into a thoughtful engagement with modern and contemporary art.

Charles Ephraim Burchfield (American, 1893-1967)
Charles Ephraim Burchfield was an American modernist painter best known for his expressive watercolor landscapes that seem to vibrate with light, movement, and sound. Born in Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio, Burchfield studied at the Cleveland School of Art before working as a wallpaper designer for M.H. Birge & Sons Company in Buffalo, New York. Drawing inspiration from his immediate surroundings – town streets, industrial sites, forests, and wildflowers – he developed a highly personal visual language that fused natural observation with emotional and spiritual intensity. His early town and landscape scenes – painted while living in West Seneca, New York – share affinities with the work of his contemporary and friend Edward Hopper.
Burchfield gained national recognition with a solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1930, Charles Burchfield: Early Watercolors 1916-18, and in 1936 Life magazine named him one of America’s ten greatest painters. During the 1940s, he produced some of his most visionary and hallucinatory works, including the monumental Four Seasons (1949-1960), which depicts the cyclical transformation of a forest through exaggerated, cathedral-like forms. In addition to painting, he taught at the Art Institute of Buffalo and the University of Buffalo in the early 1950s. Shortly before his death in West Seneca, New York, Buffalo State College established the Charles E. Burchfield Center, now home to the largest public collection of his work, while his paintings are also held in major institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Phillips Collection.