Charles Demuth was born in Lancaster in 1883 and grew up in the family home on East King Street, next to the family’s tobacco shop. A childhood illness left him with a limp, and he spent much of his youth drawing and painting.
He studied art in Philadelphia and in Paris, where he met many of the leading modern artists of the time.
Precisionism
Demuth is known as a leading painter of Precisionism, an American style using clean lines and geometric shapes. Many of his best-known works show Lancaster’s grain elevators, factories and smokestacks, which he turned into crisp modern compositions.
His painting I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, from 1928, is a tribute to his friend, the poet William Carlos Williams. It is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
He also painted delicate watercolors of flowers and fruit, many inspired by his mother’s garden.
Final years
Demuth had diabetes and was one of the early patients to be treated with insulin. He died in Lancaster in 1935.
The museum
The Demuth Museum is in his house and studio on East King Street, with the garden that inspired him. Next door, the Demuth Tobacco Shop, founded in 1770, is considered the oldest tobacco shop in the country.