The building with the cupola is Billy McConnell's store. Billy and his wife Martha lived above the store. When we found this painting in a book on American Regionalists, Mom (Doris Irene Elliott Garlock) thought the tavern must be the building to the left, which she remembered having a pool hall where soda pop was served. We don't know which building Burchfield called the "Tavern."

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967)

Charles Burchfield was a well-known twentieth-century American Regionalist painter. He was born in Ashtubula Harbor, Ohio in 1893. His family lived in Salem, Ohio in his early years. Working in watercolors, he painted the things he saw around him everyday--the views out of his windows, his street and neighbors, his town and its environs.

Burchfield felt he had to spend time in a place and with its people in order to be able to paint them. For a few years after moving to Buffalo, New York, where he lived and worked as a wallpaper designer, he returned to his home state to find familiar subjects for his paintings.

In 1928 he visited Hammondsville, Ohio in Jefferson County, adjacent to his home county of Columbiana and painted "The Tavern in Hammondsville, Ohio." He captured the town in its prime when it prospered with brickyards, clay mines, stone quarries, and coal mines.

During the early 1920s Burchfield received recognition for his work capturing small town midwest America. Major museums such as the Brooklyn Museum in New York City and the Metropolitan Museum of Art began to acquire his work in 1924. In the 1930s he had exhibitions at museums like the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Burchfield died in 1967 at the age of 74. He preserved the essence of small town midwestern American life through his work. Many of his subjects are still standing in the Salem, Ohio area and the Burchfield Homestead Society is working to preserve them.

Many thanks to the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy Andover for permission to use this painting from their collection.