Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, Vol. 44, September 2-3, 1942

            Evening – B & M & I to theArtSchoolTea.  Meet there Mrs. Ritchie (wife of the new director of the Albright Gallery), the Eliots, and the Soyer’s — Made arrangements for the Soyers to come out tomorrow —

Sept. 3 —

            It is my habit to fear the making of acquaintance with new people, and probably if no one else ever made first overtures I would never meet anyone. So it was with the visit of the Soyer’s — but I need have had no apprehension. I liked them both —Soyer was all artist, and interested so completely in pictures. He said his visit here was the happiest day of his stay in Buffalo, which I can well understand, for there is not an artist in Buffalo who is completely an artist — The most are dilettanti, more interested in social life, or the politics of “art circles.”

Charles E. Burchfield, September 2-3, 1942

[Burchfield first references his wife Bertha and daughter Martha, and then the wife of Dr. Ritchie, who was Director of the Albright Art Gallery (July 1, 1942-January 1, 1949). Burchfield served two terms as a member of the Board of Directors 1948-51 and 1952-55. He also mentions artists who had come to Buffalo to teach: Philip C. Elliott and his wife, Virginia Cuthbert, and social realist painter Isaac Soyer, and his wife.]