Background
Charles Demuth was born on November 8, 1883 in Lancaster. He was the son of a tobacconist.
He pursued graduate study in art in Philadelphia, first at Drexel University.
He attended Franklin and Marshall College.
He pursued graduate study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Demuth studied at the School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia from 1903 to 1905.
Charles Demuth was born on November 8, 1883 in Lancaster. He was the son of a tobacconist.
Demuth studied at the School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia from 1903 to 1905. After his hip injury began to heal and he was no longer bedridden, his parents sent him to Martha Bowman for private art lessons in still life and landscape painting. As a child and young man, he also trained with other local artists. His early sketchbooks reveal a formidable level of talent and dedication for someone so young.
As financially secure merchants, Demuth's parents were consistently supportive of his desire to pursue a career in art. He attended Franklin and Marshall College and later pursued graduate study in art in Philadelphia, first at Drexel University and then at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
While at the Academy, Charles Demuth painted his first self-portrait in oil in 1907. William Carlos Williams (later renowned as a leading American poet of modernism and imagism) was living in the same boarding house and the two young men established a friendship which remained throughout their lives.
After leaving school, Demuth shifted away from painting in oil and began to favor watercolor as a medium. He was inspired, quite literally, by what he saw in his own backyard, producing paintings of flowers and his mother's vegetable garden. He was also inspired by his travels to New York City and Provincetown, Cape Cod, where he spent many summers from 1914 onward. Along with the playwright Eugene O'Neill, Demuth became one of the founders of the Provincetown Players, an influential theatre company that played a pivotal role in shaping the landscape of 20th century American drama.
During the rest of the year, he took the train to New York almost every week and developed friendships with members of the city's artistic elite, including Alfred Stieglitz, Marcel Duchamp, and Edward Fisk. He visited galleries, where he was exposed to the works of leading European and expatriate artists. He also enjoyed the city's nightclubs and jazz bars, and the creative, bohemian atmosphere of the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age New York began to appear in his paintings. Although he spent a great deal of time in New York City and Provincetown, Lancaster remained Demuth's home throughout his life, his art rooted in his perception of it as a typically American town, albeit one that shifted to reflect changing times.
His artistic success enabled him to travel when his health permitted it, and in the winter of 1915 - 1916 he rented an apartment on the south side of Washington Square Park, to draw inspiration from the vibrant creative atmosphere of Greenwich Village. In the late 1910s he made several trips to Paris where he met fellow artist Marsden Hartley, who he introduced himself to after overhearing an American accent at a bar. He quickly endeared himself to Hartley and his friends with his outgoing nature, willingness to poke fun at himself, and risque sense of humor.
Along with Hartley, Demuth traveled to Bermuda in 1917 and began a series of architectural and landscape paintings inspired by Cézanne, which heralded his first experimentations with Cubist and Modernist principles. These pieces formed part of an acclaimed exhibition in the fall of 1917 at the Daniel Gallery in New York, alongside the works of modernist painter Edward Fisk.
Demuth traveled to Paris repeatedly in the late 1910s and early 1920s. As a gay man, he found the city more open and accepting than much of the United States, and a number of his paintings - which were not intended for public view at the time he painted them - vividly depict the vibrant gay subculture of postwar Paris. The Lafayette Baths became one of his favorite haunts and is likely the setting of a 1918 self-portrait.
Yet his memories of Paris were not all happy ones: in September 1921, illness forced him to be admitted to the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine. He was treated and released but was too unwell to return to America until November. Back home in Lancaster he was diagnosed with diabetes and began experimental treatments, including a near-starvation diet and insulin injections.
Having brought his diabetes under control, Demuth began painting the first in his series of "poster portraits" in 1923. These were symbolic interpretations of the works of fellow artists and writers, including Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur Dove, John Marin, and William Carlos Williams. That same year, he became one of the first of his contemporaries to have work purchased for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent collection. During the mid-1920s, he had several successful solo exhibitions and in 1927, the first book on his work was published, and he began his latest major series of seven paintings, based on the architecture of Lancaster. The paintings became iconic representations of the industrialization of small-town America and cemented Demuth's reputation as the leading painter of the Precisionist movement, the first home-grown modern art movement within the United States.
Accompanied by hometown friends Elsie and Frank Everts, Demuth made his final visit to Provincetown in 1934. During the trip he created some of his last works, sketches of beach scenes in pencil and watercolor. He died the following year in Lancaster at age 51 due to complications from diabetes. In his will, Demuth stipulated that many of his paintings should go to Georgia O'Keefe, whose role in determining which museums received his works helped preserve and fortify his reputation. In the years after his death, Demuth's family home on East King Street in Lancaster became a museum dedicated exclusively to his art.
Sail: In Two Movements
Welcome to Our City
Poster Portrait: O'Keefe
Wild Orchids
Turkish Bath with Self Portrait
Plums
The Tower
The Jazz Singer
Stairs, Provincetown
Machinery
The Death of Nana
And the Home of the Brave
Roofs and Steeple
Eggplant and Tomatoes
Vaudeville Dancers
Spring
Chimney and Water Tower
Trees and Barns Bermuda
Self-Portrait
Rue du Singe Qui Pêche
Hotel
Incense of a New Church
Acrobats
I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold
Paauebot 'Paris
My Egypt
Modern Conveniences
Love Love Love
Poster Portrait: Duncan
Red Cabbages, Rhubarb and Orange
Business
Study for Poster Portrait Marsden Hartley
Pansies
The Shine
Coastal Scene
End of the Parade, Coatesville, Pa.
Aucassin and Nicolette
Lancaster
Poster Portrait: Dove
The Boat Ride from Sorrento
Provincetown Dunes
After All
Challenging the boundaries of race, class, sexuality, and artistic tradition, Demuth digested the shifting social landscape around him and left behind a memorable body of work that defies categorization.
Like his friend and contemporary Georgia O'Keeffe, Demuth focused with intensity and precision on flowers and other vegetation. Unlike O'Keeffe, he stripped them down to precise geometric shapes and bold colors, imposing form and specificity on the chaos of the organic.
Quotations:
"So few understand love and work; I think if a few do we may not have lived entirely without point."
“Paintings must be looked at and looked at and looked at. No writing, no talking, no singing, no dancing will explain them.”
While he was in Paris he met Marsden Hartley by walking up to a table of American artists and asking if he could join them. He had a great sense of humor, rich in double entendres, and they asked him to be a regular member of their group. Through Hartley he met Alfred Stieglitz and became a member of the Stieglitz group.
Physical Characteristics: Demuth developed a rare, debilitating disease called Perthes at the age of five. The disease affected the ball and socket joints of his hips, making it difficult for him to walk.
Marcel Duchamp and the Cubists
From 1909 onwards, Demuth maintained a romantic relationship with Robert Evans Locher, an Art Deco interior decorator and stage designer.