Charles Demuth

Charles Demuth (1883-1935), American painter, born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and in Paris and Berlin. Demuth demonstrated an early awareness of the new avenues of expression being explored by contemporary European artists. Aspects of Expressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism found their way into his work and he became closely associated with the Precisionist style. His illustrations, executed in line and watercolour between 1915 and 1919 for such works as Nana by Émile Zola and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, achieved considerable critical acclaim. But his fame rests most securely on his watercolours of flowers and circus people and his cool, semiabstract architectural scenes in oil and tempera. Examples of the latter are I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (1928, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Business (1921, Art Institute of Chicago), and My Egypt (1927, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York).