Bay #4 Joins Foundation

Lititz painter John Muth has given the Demuth Foundation Bay #4, one of Charles Demuth's more brilliantly hued landscape watercolors. The circa 19 X 13 inch picture is one of a series that Demuth executed, probably during the summer of 1913 at a retreat in Normandy, where he had gone to paint soon after first seeing the similarly bright work of the Fauvists and Cubists at Gertrude Stein's atelier in Paris. The two Lancaster County artists met in 1931 or 1932, when young Muth -- then in his late twenties -- went to call on Demuth who had come home for what was to prove his long, final illness. Muth had recently returned from Paris where he had encountered several mutual acquaintances. That visit, plus the similarity of their names, resulted in a friendship during which Muth chauffeured Demuth around the county on several drives to take in the scenery and landscapes. In Muth's Lititz studio, Demuth exclaimed over a painting done in Paris. “My God, where did you get this?” Muth recalled his asking. “Do all your work like this and don't sell anything for under $1,000!” Until Demuth's death in 1935, they were occasional companions on such outings and talked about their work. In the process, Muth recently said, he had learned something distinctive about the difference in their techniques. Never comfortable painting landscapes in a manner that Muth called “free,” Demuth began with pencil sketches and manipulated his watercolor washes with the use of blotters to achieve his control of light and shade. Muth himself worked more openly. At one point they exchanged paintings, Muth choosing Bay #4. “If you like it, take it along, and if you get tired of it, bring it back,” Demuth told him. “It means you to me,” Muth said in return, ostensibly because the watercolor reflected various methods Demuth used in later work. The Foundation is surely fortunate in being able to add John Muth's Demuth to its permanent collection. First publicly exhibited at Franklin and Marshall College in 1948, Bay #4 was also included in the Foundation's tenth anniversary show in 1992 and again last year in its Plein Air exhibition. An exhibition of John Muth's own work will open at the Foundation in August. B.K.