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Your galleryIn Vaudeville, the Bicycle Rider
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Find the big yellow oval behind the rider, and see how the pencil lines of his shirt and wheels show through the thin color.
In 1915 Demuth began picturing the vaudeville and circus performers he had seen at two theaters in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, his home town. This rider of 1919 leans far back on a small red bicycle. The sheet went from the artist to Francis Biddle in 1928 and later to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.
watercolor and graphite on laid paper · sheet: 27.62 × 21.91 cm · National Gallery of Art · American modernism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- In Vaudeville, the Bicycle Rider
- Artist
- Charles Demuth American, 1883 - 1935
- Date
- 1919
- Medium
- watercolor and graphite on laid paper
- Dimensions
- sheet: 27.62 × 21.91 cm (10 7/8 × 8 5/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Corcoran Collection (Bequest of Mr. and Mrs. Francis Biddle, 1957)
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- National Gallery of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.







