Back home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Demuth decided to invigorate his
own work by throwing out preconceived
notions of how a painting should look.
Instead of returning to old, worn-out subjects, he found new challenges at a local
Where had he seen such paintings?
Like many young American artists,
Demuth had traveled to France to mingle
with other aspiring painters and sketch
from live models at the official art acad-emies of Paris. While he was there, he
encountered the startling work of fauvist
and cubist artists who were turning the
art world upside down with their wild
colors and splintered forms. Demuth
and his friends spent many hours in
their favorite French café, discussing
and debating these shocking modernist
trends.
When Charles Demuth was a young art student
at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in
Philadelphia, he learned all the rules for painting
in a traditional realistic style. But by the time he
painted Bicycle Act, Vaudeville, the artist had different ideas. Instead of imitating the dark somber
style taught by his instructors, he was drawn to
the bright, highly unconventional paintings that were causing a tremendous fuss
in Europe.
About the Artist
Linda Andre
by
Charles
Bicycle
Looking
&
Henry
Act,
Learning
Charles Henry Demuth (1883–1935), Trees and Barns (Bermuda) , 1917. Watercolor
over graphite; 9 15/16 x 14" ( 24.75 x 35 cm). The Baltimore Museum of Art: Purchase
Fund BMA 1950.49. Photograph by Mitro Hood.
theater where high-energy, fun-filled vaudeville
shows were a regular attraction. For a few dollars
he could enjoy a fast-paced spectacle of acrobats,
jugglers, magicians, dancers, trained animals,
slapstick comics, horseback riders, rope skippers,
singers, and bicycle stuntmen. Using pencil, water-
Demuth
Vaudeville
Into the spotlight rides the bicycle stuntman with his leg flung over the handlebar! Leaning far to the right as his bike
tilts to the left, he manages to keep his
balance with just one foot on the pedal
About the Art
About the same time, Demuth visited the island
of Bermuda where pastel-colored buildings nestled
among leafy trees. Demuth arranged the angular
planes of roofs, walls, and windows intermixed
with the curving lines of tree trunks and
the scalloped edges of foliage to create a
cubist composition that was just as up-to-
date as the landscapes he had seen in the
avant-garde galleries of New York.
Aside from regular train trips to visit
artist friends in the city, Demuth contin-
ued his pursuit of modernism from the
modest home he shared with his mother
in Lancaster. Whether painting the
roofs and steeples of the city, the factory
smokestacks of the surrounding indus-
trial landscape, or the luscious flowers
in his mother’s backyard garden, he con-
tinued to find fresh and exciting ways to
portray the world around him.
color paint, and brush, he brought the vaudeville
performers to life with strong shapes, bold outlines,
