Expert painter and watercolorist, Demuth's variety of styles and subjects show his complexity and talent.

Charles Demuth was born on November 8, 1883 to a Lancaster, Pennsylvania family that had owned a tobacco shop since American Colonial times. He studied art initially in Philadelphia at The Drexel Institute then The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he was a pupil of painter and revered teacher William Merritt Chase.

Paris Influences and The Seven

Demuth made his way to Paris in 1907 and was soon part of a group of artistic Americans living there which included painter Marsden Hartley. Demuth also absorbed the variety of aesthetic movements going on in Paris at the time, and elements of Fauvism and Cubism would find their way into his work as he developed his own distinctive style

Demuth’s 1912 exhibit of watercolors at The Pennsylvania Academy of Arts drew considerable praise. His reputation continued to grow through his deft use of color and composition, and through his interesting range of subject matter, which ranged from landscapes to exquisitely beautiful flowers, to more curious and fascinating studies of acrobats, cabaret performers, sailors and Turkish bath interiors. Demuth also did literary illustrations for Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, German playwright Wedekind's Pandora's Box, and Edgar Allan Poe's The Mask of the Red Death, again indicating his ability to depict the macabre or unusual.

Through his friend Marsden Hartley, Demuth met photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, who included Demuth in an artistic group known as “The Seven.” Besides Demuth and Hartley, The Seven's members were painters Arthur Dove, John Marin, Stieglitz’s soon-to-be wife Georgia O’Keeffe, and photographer Paul Strand as well as Stieglitz himself.

Precisionist Works and Poster Portraits

By 1918, Demuth had begun a series of urban paintings in a sharp, Precisionist manner similar to another Stieglitz associate, artist and fellow Pennsylvanian Charles Sheeler. In the following decade, Demuth would produce a group of what he called “poster portraits,” or abstract depictions of several of his friends. One of the better known poster portraits is the 1928 The Figure Five in Gold (also called I Saw the Figure Five in Gold), inspired by the poet and physician William Carlos Williams’ The Great Figure:

Among the rain

and lights

I saw the figure 5

in gold

on a red

fire truck

moving….

Demuth had known Williams since their student days when they had both lived at the same Philadelphia boardinghouse. Demuth’s bold use of the number 5 itself amid a kaleidoscopic background has been described as a precursor to the Pop Art movement.

Lancaster and Legacy

Despite his New York associations and occasional travels to Paris and Bermuda, Demuth preferred to keep his studio in his childhood home in Lancaster. He worked on the second floor with a view of his mother’s garden in the back of the house, the garden being a great source of inspiration, particularly for Demuth’s floral studies.

Demuth’s health was troubled throughout his life. He had suffered from tuberculosis as a child then later developed diabetes, and he limped when walking and was dependent upon a cane. Despite his physical challenges, however, he produced over 1,000 works before his death from diabetic complications in 1935.

Demuth’s paintings and watercolors are now part of many major American museum collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago and The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Furthermore, as one of Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s most famous residents, Demuth’s former home and studio on King Street have been turned into the Demuth Museum, while the family’s Demuth Tobacco Shop is still open for business and is the oldest of its kind in the United States.

Sources

• Charles Demuth: Answers.com
• The Demuth Foundation and Charles Demuth Museum
• The Great Figure and I Saw The Figure Five In Gold -- The Poet Speaks of Art, Emory University