Lot Essay
Zinnias and Scarlet Sage is an important watercolor painted in 1933 by Charles Demuth while he was living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Although he had investigated in the early 1920s a number of subjects, Demuth returned to still life painting in the late 1920s and dedicated himself, for the better part of 6 years, to fully developing still lifes of flowers and fruit. The works from this period remain some of the artist's finest achievements and rank Demuth as one of America's most successful watercolorists.
Demuth's later still life compositions are developed around a strong negative space where the artist has allowed the stark white of the paper, or a pale transluscent wash, to act as a force that pushes forth the true subject matter. This is a departure from Demuth's earlier still lifes from the late teens and early 1920s. Many of the works from the teens are more fully developed in the background, with the flowers shrouded in a dark grey or muted purple veil of abstract wash. The background is certainly not fully defined in these works, but the field of darker color implies a mystical and mysterious tone.
By the early twenties, Demuth was beginning to explore fully his ideas of the empty space beyond his subject, but many of the works, such as Flower Study No. I (Cyclamen and Hyacinth) in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois have sharp angular precisionistic backgrounds. It is in Demuth's later still lifes such as Zinnias and Scarlet Sage that the beauty of the simple still life subject is released to burst forth, seemingly to leap off the paper into the viewer's perspective.
Zinnias and Scarlet Sage exemplifies Demuth's successful use of this artistic method, as the scarlet sage bursts out of the top of the picture and the warm golden hues of the zinnia are accurately captured . In the current picture, Demuth has intentionally left transparent a second Zinnia to the lower left of the central flower. This achieves the strong effect of highlighting the brilliant flower in the center of the subject.
Noted Demuth scholar Emily Farnham wrote of Demuth's experimentation with this "new" artistic device. "Still another factor in Demuth which seems to have affected the New Realism is his frequent use of a pristine, immaculate, antiseptic white ground. It was notably in his watercolor still lifes that he habitually placed exquisitely delineated positive objects (peaches, eggplant, striped kitchen towels) against a luminous unpainted ground. This device has reappeared during the sixties in the works of Californian Thiebaud, who employs pure white grounds behind relief-like human figures as means toward the psychological and technical isolation of his subjects." (Charles Demuth: Behind a Laughing Mask, Norman, Oklahoma, 1971, p. 185)
Most effectively through his still life subjects, Charles Demuth developed a unique artistic vision that has impacted the recent history of American painting. In his most successful watercolors, such as Zinnias and Scarlet Sage, Demuth has developed pictures of great beauty that indicate his remarkable draughtmanship, unique sense of color and pictorial space.
Demuth's later still life compositions are developed around a strong negative space where the artist has allowed the stark white of the paper, or a pale transluscent wash, to act as a force that pushes forth the true subject matter. This is a departure from Demuth's earlier still lifes from the late teens and early 1920s. Many of the works from the teens are more fully developed in the background, with the flowers shrouded in a dark grey or muted purple veil of abstract wash. The background is certainly not fully defined in these works, but the field of darker color implies a mystical and mysterious tone.
By the early twenties, Demuth was beginning to explore fully his ideas of the empty space beyond his subject, but many of the works, such as Flower Study No. I (Cyclamen and Hyacinth) in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois have sharp angular precisionistic backgrounds. It is in Demuth's later still lifes such as Zinnias and Scarlet Sage that the beauty of the simple still life subject is released to burst forth, seemingly to leap off the paper into the viewer's perspective.
Zinnias and Scarlet Sage exemplifies Demuth's successful use of this artistic method, as the scarlet sage bursts out of the top of the picture and the warm golden hues of the zinnia are accurately captured . In the current picture, Demuth has intentionally left transparent a second Zinnia to the lower left of the central flower. This achieves the strong effect of highlighting the brilliant flower in the center of the subject.
Noted Demuth scholar Emily Farnham wrote of Demuth's experimentation with this "new" artistic device. "Still another factor in Demuth which seems to have affected the New Realism is his frequent use of a pristine, immaculate, antiseptic white ground. It was notably in his watercolor still lifes that he habitually placed exquisitely delineated positive objects (peaches, eggplant, striped kitchen towels) against a luminous unpainted ground. This device has reappeared during the sixties in the works of Californian Thiebaud, who employs pure white grounds behind relief-like human figures as means toward the psychological and technical isolation of his subjects." (Charles Demuth: Behind a Laughing Mask, Norman, Oklahoma, 1971, p. 185)
Most effectively through his still life subjects, Charles Demuth developed a unique artistic vision that has impacted the recent history of American painting. In his most successful watercolors, such as Zinnias and Scarlet Sage, Demuth has developed pictures of great beauty that indicate his remarkable draughtmanship, unique sense of color and pictorial space.