Description
Bermuda: Houses Seen Through Trees (1918)
Charles Demuth (1883-1935) was one of the leading artists during the American Modernism era. He was distinguished for intimate watercolors and cubic architectural paintings. Demuth studied art at Académie Julian in Paris, where he was welcomed into the avant-garde art scene and met other American Cubism artists like Marsden Hartley.
His watercolor figures have a weightless and surrealistic character with a sensitive linear style, in which he illustrated plays and novels such as Émile Zola’s Nana. He also depicted an evolving gay scene of encounters at bath houses through watercolors for his close friends, like the “Turkish Bath”, works that now are of great historical significance. Demuth later employed a cubist technique by painting industrial factories with complex structural planes, leading him to becoming a pioneer for the precisionist movement.
“Search the history of American art,” wrote Ken Johnson in The New York Times, “and you will discover few watercolors more beautiful than those of Charles Demuth. Combining exacting botanical observation and loosely Cubist abstraction, his watercolors of flowers, fruit and vegetables have a magical liveliness and an almost shocking sensuousness.”
Demuth was a lifelong resident of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The home he shared with his mother is now the Demuth Museum, which showcases his work. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall Academy before studying at Drexel University and at Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. While he was a student at PAFA, he participated in a show at the academy, and also met William Carlos Williams at his boarding house. The two were fast friends and remained close for the rest of their lives.
He later studied at Académie Colarossi and Académie Julian in Paris, where he became a part of the avant garde art scene. The Parisian artistic community was accepting of Demuth’s homosexuality. After his return to America, Demuth retained aspects of Cubism in many of his works.
This item is part of our Fine Arts Collection where we design new items influenced by the masters of fine art, design, decorative arts and textiles. Explore our growing list of featured artists.
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