Demuth, Charles

Demuth, Charles

(1883–1935) painter; born in Lancaster, Pa. He worked in water colors and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Anshutz (1905–08), at the Académie Julian, Paris (1912–14), and lived in New York City. From 1910–14 he painted illustrations for several writers, including Emile Zola and Henry James. Lame and diabetic, he illustrated the joys of physical life, as in Circus Riders (1916), and Acrobats (1919). His later work was a combination of cubism and realism, as in the grain elevators of My Egypt (1927).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.