Mountain with Red House (circa 1913)

Charles Demuth prints bring together two sides of one of America's most original modern painters. Demuth made some of the finest watercolors in American art, full of loose flowers, fruit and vaudeville performers, and he also helped invent Precisionism, with its crisp, geometric views of buildings. This collection offers more than 100 of his works as art prints, from his famous I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold to Bermuda landscapes and garden flowers.

About Charles Demuth

Charles Demuth was born on November 8, 1883, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and spent most of his life there. A hip injury in early childhood left him with a limp, and while he was bedridden his mother, Augusta, gave him crayons and watercolors.

He studied at the Drexel Institute and then at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where William Merritt Chase was among his teachers and where he met the poet William Carlos Williams, a friend for life. Trips to Paris between 1907 and 1921 put him in touch with the European avant-garde. There he met Marsden Hartley, who introduced him to the photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, and he counted Marcel Duchamp among his friends.

From 1914 he spent many summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he helped found the Provincetown Players with Eugene O'Neill. A stay in Bermuda with Hartley around 1917 led to his first Cubist-influenced landscapes. Back in Lancaster, he turned the town's rooftops, steeples, factories and grain elevators into the sharp-edged paintings that made his name as a Precisionist.

Demuth lived with diabetes and was one of the first people in the United States to be treated with insulin. He died in Lancaster on October 23, 1935, at 51. His will left many of his works to his friend Georgia O'Keeffe.

Style and Subjects

Demuth's watercolors are light and airy. Flowers, eggplants, peppers and pears float on bare paper in soft, transparent washes. His vaudeville and circus scenes, painted from about 1914, show acrobats, jugglers and dancers in quick, lively color, and his unpublished illustrations for books by Zola, Henry James, Wedekind and Poe have a moody, theatrical feel.

His Precisionist work looks very different. Buildings, factories and machines are simplified into clean, flat planes and straight edges, borrowing ideas from Cubism. In his "poster portraits" of friends such as Williams, O'Keeffe and Arthur Dove, he skipped the usual likeness and used words, numbers and objects that stand for the person instead.

Famous Works

• I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (1928), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. A poster portrait of William Carlos Williams, based on Williams's poem "The Great Figure."
• My Egypt (1927), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The grain silos of Lancaster rise like a monument in this key Precisionist painting.
• Incense of a New Church (1921), Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio. An early Precisionist painting from the year he turned to Cubist-influenced architecture.
• In Vaudeville (Dancer with Chorus) (1918), Philadelphia Museum of Art. One of his lively watercolors of the vaudeville stage.
• Roofs and Steeple (1921), Brooklyn Museum, New York. Rooftops and a church steeple simplified into clean, Cubist-influenced shapes.
• Lulu and Alva Schoen (1918), Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. One of his illustrations for Wedekind's plays, tense and dramatic.
• Love, Love, Love. Homage to Gertrude Stein (1928), Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. A tribute to the writer built from words and symbols rather than a likeness.

Decorating with Demuth Prints

The flower and vegetable watercolors, such as Zinnias, Red Poppies, Iris, Eggplants and Green Pears, are a natural fit for kitchens, dining rooms and bedrooms. Their pale paper and soft color sit well in light, simple rooms. The Bermuda landscapes and the Fish Series suit a bathroom, hallway or coastal home.

For a living room or study, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold and the poster portraits of O'Keeffe, Dove and Duncan bring bold red, gold and graphic shapes that work well with mid-century and modern furniture. The vaudeville and acrobat scenes add color and movement to an entertainment space or music room.

FAQ

What art movement was Charles Demuth part of?

Demuth is best known as a leader of Precisionism, the American style of the 1920s that shows buildings and industry with sharp, simplified forms, alongside Charles Sheeler and Georgia O'Keeffe.

What is Charles Demuth's most famous painting?

I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (1928) is his best-known work. It is a portrait of his friend William Carlos Williams based on Williams's poem "The Great Figure," and it hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Where can I see Charles Demuth's original paintings?

Major works are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation, the Brooklyn Museum and the Columbus Museum of Art. The Demuth Museum in his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, also holds his work.

How can I recognize a Charles Demuth painting?

Look for either delicate watercolors of flowers, fruit or performers in soft, transparent washes, or crisp oil and tempera views of buildings and factories reduced to simple geometric shapes.

Why did Charles Demuth paint so many watercolors?

Watercolor was his favorite medium from early on, after his mother gave him paints as a sick child. He set it aside mainly for his Lancaster architecture series, which he painted larger in oil and tempera.

Related Artists

• Marsden Hartley — met Demuth in Paris and traveled with him to Bermuda
• Georgia O'Keeffe — fellow Precisionist, subject of a poster portrait and heir to many of his works
• Charles Sheeler — fellow leader of Precisionism
• Arthur Dove — Stieglitz circle modernist and subject of a poster portrait
• John Marin — Stieglitz circle watercolorist and subject of a poster portrait