Charles Demuth

Pennsylvania Precisionist best remembered for romantic watercolors marked by vibrant sensuousness and elegant refinement

By Alexandra A. Jopp

Charles Demuth, a key figure in the development of Modernism in the United States, became famous for oils and watercolors of still lifes, architectural abstractions, and figural subjects

I. Biography

Charles Demuth was one of the first artists involved in the expansion of Modernism in the United States. Maintaining an extraordinary balance between abstraction and realism, he created a series of drawings of dancers, acrobats, and vaudeville performers; sophisticated still lifes of flowers, fruits and vegetables; and paintings depicting the architecture of his hometown, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In addition, he produced a series of symbolic “poster portraits” of several artist-friends, as well as luminous studies of the human figure while in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Demuth’s extraordinary capacity for observation, his strong spirit, and realistic treatment of subjects made him one of the most resolutely modern American painters of his era.

Charles Henry Buckius Demuth was born on November 8, 1883, to Augusta and Ferdinand Demuth in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the town that would remain his primary residence all his life. In childhood, a rare malady of the hip joint made him an invalid for two years and left him with a limp. He was found to have diabetes as an adult, and he became one of the first people to take insulin injections (and as frequently as every two hours).

Demuth, who had started painting as a child, began selling his works at age thirty through the George Daniel Gallery in New York, where his reputation had been established with his first solo show in 1915. He began to spend his summers at Provincetown, Massachusetts, in the years following, enthusiastically participating in the circle of personalities that gathered around playwright Eugene O’Neill.

Demuth’s formal art education took place in Philadelphia at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry from 1901 to 1905 and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied from 1905 to 1911 with William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Thomas Anshutz (1851–1912), Henry McCarter (1864–1942) and Hugh Breckenridge (1870–1937). Anshutz would be Demuth’s most influential teacher; under his influence, the artist painted in a traditional, realistic manner for several years.

Demuth went to Paris for five months in 1907–08 where he met Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, André Derain, Raol Dufy, and Maurice de Vlaminck. He returned to the French capital from 1912 to 1914 and studied at three academies––Julian, Modern, and Colarossi––with side trips to London and Berlin. His evolving style became individual, imaginative, and modern as he adopted some of the techniques of Paul Cézanne, Odilon Redon and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Demuth was also influenced by Japanese prints, which were characterized by flat chromatic surfaces, as well as the works of Impressionists and, later, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Auguste Rodin.

Upon returning to the United States, Demuth opened a studio in Provincetown and began to experiment with Cubist techniques before moving to a Precisionist approach in 1919 to depict city and industrial scenes. While spending much time in New York between 1914 and 1921, he combined the techniques that he learned in Europe into dazzling, rich watercolors. In 1917, inspired by vaudeville themes, Demuth produced a series of watercolors in the spirit of the great French realists including Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, Matisse and Rodin. As for Toulouse-Lautrec, for who Montmartre represented a fascinating mystery, a vast realm that he explored every night, so was New York, with its theaters, nightclubs, and cafes, and Lancaster, a central stop for vaudeville performers, places of amusement, and inspiration for Demuth. He captured these images in works such as Vaudeville: Dancer with Chorus (1918; Philadelphia Museum of Art).

Demuth soon came into contact with Marcel Duchamp and Dadaism, and in the summer of 1916, while working in Provincetown with Marsden Hartley, he reoriented his style to a controlled form of Cubism that verged on abstraction. The following year, Hartley and Demuth worked in Bermuda and Demuth’s style started to develop a more structured, Cubist style. During the 1920s, he moved to small still lifes and florals, using a more realistic approach, with a tincture of Precisionism, Expressionism, and, at times, Realism and abstraction. Demuth’s flower paintings and vaudeville works remain the most admired among art collectors.

Among Demuth’s most extraordinary achievements is a series of symbolic “poster portraits” that he worked on from the mid to late-1920s. The best known of these is The Figure Five in Gold, a tribute to Demuth’s longtime friend, poet William Carlos Williams. The title references a Williams poem that describes the number five seen on a swiftly passing fire engine. Demuth also painted works that honored colleagues Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, and John Marin.

After a final visit to Paris in the autumn of 1921, complications from diabetes kept Demuth mostly at his mother’s house in Lancaster, where he died in a room with a view of his mother’s garden––the subject of his most romantic and exquisite oils and watercolors. His home in Lancaster serves today as a museum that focuses on his life and work.

II. Chronology

• 1883 Born on November 8 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania
• 1901–05 Trained at Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry
• 1905–11 Entered Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied with Thomas
• Anschutz, Henry McCarter, Hugh Breckenridge, and William Merritt Chase
• 1907 Spent year in Europe working in Paris, London, and Berlin
• 1908 Returned to Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
• 1912–14 Traveled to Paris for second time and studied at three academies: Modern, Julian, and Colarossi
• 1914 Visited Provincetown, Massachusetts for first time
• 1914 First one-man exhibition held at Daniel Gallery in New York
• 1915 First solo show presented watercolor landscapes and flower studies
• 1916 First serious exploration of Cubism: series of landscapes and architectural views painted in Bermuda
• 1917–18 Painted series of watercolors inspired by vaudeville and circus subjects, including Vaudeville: Dancer with Chorus and Acrobats
• 1918 Began to paint still lifes of flowers, fruits, and vegetables, which were to become favorite subjects
• 1919 Began series of paintings depicting subjects inspired by architecture of Lancaster; Pennsylvania; works were larger in scale and sustained balance between abstraction and realism
• 1921 Traveled to Europe
• 1923 Started exploring portrait genre; produced series of symbolic “poster portraits” of
• several friends, most well-known of which is I Saw the Figure Five in Gold
• 1926 One-man show at Anderson Galleries and Intimate Gallery (Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery) in New York
• 1927 Started series of seven panel paintings depicting factory buildings in Lancaster,
• Pennsylvania
• 1934 Produced series of luminous studies of human figures during summer in
• Provincetown, Massachusetts
• 1935 Died of complications from diabetes on October 23

III. Collections

• Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
• Amon Carter Museum, Texas
• Art Institute of Chicago
• Brooklyn Museum
• Canton Museum of Art, Ohio
• Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
• Charles Demuth Museum, Pennsylvania
• Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
• Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
• Currier Gallery of Art, New Hampshire
• Dallas Museum of Art
• Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
• Harvard University Art Museums, Massachusetts
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.
• Indianapolis Museum of Art
• Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri
• Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, New York
• Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
• Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
• Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey
• Sheldon Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska
• Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.
• Springfield Museum of Art, Ohio
• Tacoma Art Museum, Washington
• Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago
• The Huntington Library, California
• The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.
• Walker Art Center, Minnesota
• Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

IV. Exhibitions

• 1913 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
• 1915 George Daniel Gallery, New York
• 1917 Society of Independent Artists
• 1924, 1930 Salons of America
• 1925 291 Gallery
• 1926 Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Expo (medal)
• 1934 Smith College Museum of Art
• 1935–37, 87 Whitney Museum of American Art
• 1935, 1957 Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.
• 1941 Cincinnati Art Museum
• 1942 Phillips Memorial Gallery
• 1944 Philadelphia Museum of Art
• 1949 Albertina, Vienna
• 1949–50 Museum of Modern Art (retrospective)
• 1949–50 Art Institute of Chicago

V. Suggested Resources

• Eiseman, A.L. Charles Demuth. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1982.
• Haskell, B. Charles Demuth. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1987.

• Kellner, Bruce. ed. Letters of Charles Demuth, American Artist, 1883–1935: With Assessments of His Work
• by His Contemporaries. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000.
• Lampe, A.M. Demuth: out of the chateau: works from the Demuth Museum. Lancaster, Penn.: Demuth
• Museum, 2007.
• Weinberg, J. Speaking for vice: homosexuality in the art of Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, and the first
• American avant-garde. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.