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Off-Canvas: An Exhibition of China Painting and Other Crafts The opening exhibition of the fall season at the Museum will eschew oils and watercolors to feature some ancillary arts with which Charles Demuth was thoroughly conversant. Before he began to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, he had experimented in Lancaster with pyrography (burning designs into wooden surfaces), china painting, and needlepoint, probably during the 1890’s when these homely crafts were widely practiced. In his youth, Demuth began art lessons from Martha Bowman and china painting lessons from Lettie Purple, who lived in Columbia. “Miss Lettie,” as she was addressed, would have been aware of the tremendous vogue for china painting at the turn of the century, when fashionable young ladies took it up, sometimes going to Europe to study the technique. Initially the china was imported chiefly from England and France, but good quality porcelain became subsequently available in this country when china clay, or kaolin, was discovered in Virginia and North Carolina. The paint itself was made of glass ground to powder and then melted with various chemicals to produce a variety of colors. Once the painting had been completed, the china was fired in small kilns. Demuth was probably about ten years old when his mother engaged Miss Lettie to give him lessons. Apparently he responded eagerly to this craft, for he continued painting in the medium until his early thirties. His cousin by marriage, Dorothea Demuth, had many samples of his work, and he gave pieces away to friends from time to time, notably to the three Stettheimer sisters and to art critic Henry McBride. Another friend, novelist Carl Van Vechten remembered “teacups, saucers, plates with flowers, ladies’ heads with hats on.” Later, the surviving Stett-heimer sister, Ettie, divided her pieces between Van Vechten and Demuth’s best friend, decorator and designer Robert Locher. Other china painting featured in this exhibition is the work of Bessie Garecht Bausman (1877-1956), a Lancastrian who was also practicing this craft at the same time as Demuth. Still other art on display is the work of Mary Elizabeth Willson (1852-1918), whose family purchased Wheatland from President James Buchanan’s niece. Willson lived at Wheatland for 35 years, and while there she painted extensively on china. Her work shows some further unique examples of the craft, with imaginative vegetable and fruit images on teapots, large ornate pitchers, and grand platters. All of Willson’s works are part of a generous loan from the Lancaster County Historical Society. Also on loan for the exhibition are copies of China Decorator Magazine from the period of the craft’s popularity, as well as a china plate ready for an artist to paint over its pre-stencilled pattern. To complete the exhibition, Charles Demuth’s skill at needlepoint is on display. Tradition has it that his mother Augusta patiently filled in the vast background areas, with silk thread the color of the linen canvas, for two large matching pieces of needlepoint that Demuth designed and then executed himself in woolen thread in a rich pattern of beige, red, blue, green, brown, and gray. Demuth’s mother gave the pieces to Harris Arnold, her lawyer, who later used them to have upholstered the back and seat cushion of an imposing Queen Anne wing-chair now on permanent display in the museum. The colors are much faded, to two scraps unused in the upholstery remain to offer evidence of how Demuth had envisioned his work. The exhibition, sponsored by Anne and Robert Bowman and Judith and Roger Sandt, opens Friday, September 20, and runs through November 17.
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