Recorded: Charles Burchfield, Painting Index, Volume 1, September 3, 1916, with note: "Our backyard at Salem, O-Quivering white sunlight on sunflowers, looking S.W."; Charles Burchfield, Journals, Volume 29A, September 3, 1916; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute of Art, Utica, New York, Charles Burchfield, Catalogue of Paintings in Public and Private Collections (1970), no. 213; John I.H. Baur, The Inlander, Life and Work of Charles Burchfield, 1893-1967 (1982), p. 40, illus. on p. 49; J. Benjamin Townsend, ed., Charles Burchfield's Journals, The Poetry of Place (1993) p. 691, note 28

Exhibited: Museum of Art of Ogunquit, Maine, 1961, Paintings, Watercolors, and Drawings by Charles Burchfield; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, 1963, Charles Burchfield: Early Watercolors; Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery, Kansas City Art Institute, 1963, Inaugural Exhibition; The University of Arizona Art Gallery, Tucson, 1965-1966, Charles Burchfield, His Golden Years, A Retrospective Exhibition of Watercolors, Oils, and Graphics, p. 92, no. 33; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Museum of Art, New York, 1970, The Nature of Charles Burchfield, A Memorial Exhibition, no. 213

Ex coll: Mr. and Mrs. John Clancy, New York; Coe Kerr Gallery, New York, until 1981; To private collection, until 2004

In his Journal entry for September 3, 1916, the day he painted Dancing Sunlight, Charles Burchfield wrote: "The Season advances-All day it is September-Morning begins with Southeast-In Summer the sunlight commences in the East; shortly it is Noon, at evening it is Northwest-In this season the sunlight begins with Southeast; abruptly it is in the West & evening comes unnoticed. A great calm is in the air-this Southeast sunlight It is more a feeling than a fact-A butterfly darting against the sunlit sky is black-A sunflower at noon is blk against the sky-"