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Your galleryRooftops and Trees
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Trace the straight pencil lines that slice through the sky, then see how the red chimneys and gray roofs turn into flat, tilted shapes.
Demuth signed and dated this sheet in 1918, in the years when he was turning views of buildings into clear, angled planes. He began working this way in Provincetown in the summer of 1916, under Hartley’s influence, and a trip to Bermuda early in 1917 made his colors stronger. The watercolor once belonged to his friend, the painter George Biddle.
watercolor over graphite on wove paper · sheet: 25.4 × 35.56 cm · National Gallery of Art · American modernism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Rooftops and Trees
- Artist
- Charles Demuth American, 1883 - 1935
- Date
- 1918
- Medium
- watercolor over graphite on wove paper
- Dimensions
- sheet: 25.4 × 35.56 cm (10 × 14 in.)
- Credit line
- Corcoran Collection (Bequest of George Biddle, 1974)
- 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.