Biographies

Charles Demuth (1883 – 1935) From the web page of the Demuth Museum in Lancaster PA: “Deem” as some of his friends called him, was born in a Lancaster house on North Lime Street. At age 7, he and his family moved to the King Street home where he spent most of his lifetime. Demuth’s health was frail; from an early age he suffered from lameness and as an adult from severe diabetes. He graduated from Franklin and Marshall Academy and studied at Drexel Institute and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. As a young man he traveled to Paris where he was part of the avant garde scene. Though plagued by illness all his life, he produced over a thousand works of art, including the well known “My Egypt” which was inspired by grain elevators in Lancaster. During his lifetime he sold many of his works, enjoyed favorable reviews from art critics and was part of Alfred Stieglitz’s American Place Gallery in New York. Although he studied and painted in Philadelphia, New York, Provincetown, Paris and Bermuda, Demuth created most of his art in his home where he worked in a small second floor studio of the rear wing, overlooking the garden.