Noontide in Late May is a watercolor painting by American artist Charles E. Burchfield from 1917. During that time, Burchfield painted an exceptional group of imaginative watercolors that reminded him of his childhood fascination with natural forces. Burchfield viewed nature as a source of revelation and wanted to capture and communicate distinct moods through visionary forms.
The painting is currently held by the Burchfield Penney Art Center, which has the largest public collection of works by Charles E. Burchfield. Noontide in Late May depicts the natural world’s light and movement, a common motif in many of his other works. In this piece, he portrays the tranquility during noontime on a late spring day.
Burchfield worked primarily with watercolors and was deeply influenced by the landscape and nature surrounding his hometown where he spent most of his life painting. By using bold colors and expressive brushstrokes along with unique contour lines to break up space into form, he created rhythmic tableaux style pieces such as Noontide in Late May.
