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©
Burchfield Penney Art Center
Charles Ephraim Burchfield

Cicada Woods

1950 - 1959
Watercolour, pencil and chalk on Paper.
103 x 132 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
484
(
1980.70
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 Temporary exhibition rooms: Guardi and Venice in the Collection of the Gulbenkian Museum 14 Temporary exhibition rooms: Guardi and Venice in the Collection of the Gulbenkian Museum 15 Temporary exhibition rooms: Guardi and Venice in the Collection of the Gulbenkian Museum 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Temporary exhibition rooms 54 Temporary exhibition rooms 55 Temporary exhibition rooms 56 Temporary exhibition rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
View gigapixel
Discover some of the secrets and details invaluable to the human eye in this work.

Charles Burchfield spent the summer of 1950 teaching at Ohio University in Athens and University at Buffalo, and could therefore have begun Cicada Woods in either place. The artist decided to retouch this watercolour in 1959, though a photograph of it in its previous state shows substantial differences with respect to the final work as it is known today.

The watercolour, painted in the large format that is so common in his output, is intended to recall the song of the cicada, that mysterious insect whose deafening song fills the air on late summer nights. The dense forest — enigmatic and impenetrable in most of Burchfield’s works — is made even murkier in the present painting by the rhythmic brushstrokes that imitate the repetitive chant of the cicadas. Even the clouds with their upward movement could also recall the pattern of an echo.

Paloma Alarcó

20th Centurys. XX - Realismos en NorteaméricaWork on paperWatercolour, pencil and chalkPaper
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Private and/or didactic use
Cicada Woods. Bosques de cigarras, 1950 y 1959
Cicada Woods
Charles Ephraim Burchfield

©

Burchfield Penney Art Center

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Cicada Woods. Bosques de cigarras, 1950 y 1959
Cicada Woods
Charles Ephraim Burchfield

©

Burchfield Penney Art Center

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