Narcissi
Charles Demuth American
Not on view
Demuth's home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which he shared with his mother, was accompanied by a lavish garden whose colorful displays throughout the seasons inspired most of his flower watercolors. Here, the tall narcissi that bloom only in the spring must have been painted after his return from Bermuda. Throughout his career, flowers remained a persistent leitmotif, existing side by side with his more hard-edged, architectural subjects. In 1927 A. E. Gallatin wrote: "Demuth's studies of flowers are no doubt the examples of his work which are most familiar to the public, for since the earliest days of his career he has been engrossed in the delineation of flower forms….These water-colours the artist has produced in great profusion. The earlier ones are sometimes almost dainty in appearance, but as the years have passed they have taken on new and richer forms. His renderings of clusters of tulips, zinnias, cyclamen, daisies, gladioli and native pink orchids are possessed of a strange beauty, and that undefinable thing known as quality abounds in them."
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