Art: Music in Landscape

The Whitney Museum's annual exhibition of contemporary American art, on view in Manhattan last week, included one picture each by 145 painters. Nine out of ten exhibitors, many of them formerly figurative painters, had joined the abstract expressionist ranks. Despite some brilliantly decorative items, their combined effect was as loud and dreary as a bowling alley from the pin boys' viewpoint.

Amidst this fashionable glare of paint, Charles Burchfield's Early Winter Twilight seemed somber, unassuming and timeless. Burchfield, 66, who has been ill and little heard from in the past few years, has recently recovered his health and turned out more than...