The New Hope Art Colony: Edward Redfield, Pt. 7

"The Burning of Center Bridge" by Edward Redfield

"Edward Redfield violated his usual practice of painting at 'one go' and created two of the most dramatic works of his career. On Sunday, 22 July 1923, lightning struck the one-hundred-and-twelve-year-old Center Bridge, very close to the artist's home. Redfield and Lathrop viewed the burning bridge from the river bank and watched firemen fruitlessly attempting to extinguish the blaze. Redfield later remarked, 'Lathrop said it was a pity it couldn't be painted. So I took out an envelope and made some notes and painted all the next day. The following day, I painted it again.' 'The Burning of Center Bridge' is one of the two resulting versions.

Redfield's art changed little after 1920 and there are few stylistic differences between Redfield snow scenes of the 1920s and 1940s. During the 1930s the artist often drove as far as the Poconos in search of subject matter. Previously his subjects had been found within a mile from his home. Although he never lost his skill as a painter, some late works reveal that his painterly technique was not as flexible as it had been and that his response was not as fresh or spontaneous.

His wife died in 1947, which brought him to a state of despair. In that year he took hundreds of paintings that he held in his inventory and burned them in a huge bonfire in his yard. Redfield felt that the paintings he destroyed did not represent his finest work. Although no inventory was taken of the works that were burned, it is possible to draw some conclusions about what he discarded. In the artist's estate, there were no paintings before 1899, and there were substantially fewer paintings after 1930. Fortunately, several important early Redfield paintings survived in private collections.

He ceased to paint in 1953. He explained: 'I was outside one day. My insteps were hurting. It was very windy, and I had trouble keeping my easel up. So I quit. The main reason, though, was that I wasn't as good as I had been, and I didn't want to be putting my name on an 'old man's stuff' just to keep going.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Pennsylvania Impressionists" by Thomas Folk.)