Seven Plums in a Chinese Bowl

A group of plums, a bowl, and a knife on a round wicker glass-topped table, accompanied by scattered flowers and leaves, form the understated subject of Charles Demuth’s watercolor still life painting. Seen from above, the turquoise interior of the scalloped-edge ceramic bowl sets off the rich tints of the seven red plums. Two other rounded forms, one in the bowl and another overlapping the knife below, may also be plums or perhaps peaches. Their pale yellow color picks up that of the blossoms at lower left and upper right. Here and there, straight and curved lines in delicate tones of pale gray and tan suggest a folded cloth backdrop or a visual fragmentation of observed forms. Demuth’s spare technique, which left much of the paper untouched by watercolor, included overlaying tinted washes of color, blotting, and wet-on-wet paint application to modulate the intensity and texture of colors, with a characteristically limpid effect that leaves the underlying pencil drawing visible.

Now recognized as a master of his adopted medium, Demuth made watercolor paintings, including floral images inspired by the garden of his family’s home, from the beginning of his career. He later turned to tempera and oil painting, but temporarily gave those up between 1921 and 1924. During those years, as he suffered from symptoms of the diabetes that eventually took his life, he was particularly drawn to the physically less demanding technique of watercolor painting, especially still life arrangements in interior settings. Seven Plums in a Chinese Bowl typifies the compositions of fruit and flowers that he produced during these difficult years of convalescence, several of which feature the Chinese bowl seen here.

This watercolor shares with Demuth’s earlier tempera painting Rue du singe qui pêche (TF 1999.44) and oil-on-canvas Welcome to Our City (TF 1993.3) his characteristic rendering of forms in precise lines, fractured planes, and suggestion of multiple viewpoints—features of the style, called Precisionism, of which he was a pioneer. The transparency of watercolor uniquely suited the refined elegance of Demuth’s individual aesthetic, however. The medium was championed as particularly appropriate to the development of a distinctly American modernism, and it was easily adapted to the very different artistic outlook of such an artist as John Marin, as demonstrated in his energetic Brooklyn Bridge, on the Bridge (TF 1999.95). American modernists also took a particular interest in still life painting. Boasting a venerable tradition in American art, it offered a ready vehicle for formal experimentation—as seen, for example, in the diverse work of Patrick Henry Bruce and Georgia O’Keeffe. Seven Plums in a Chinese Bowl may also be read in more personal terms, as an ironic comment on the artist's precarious health: the knife, the flowers that have lost their petals, the broken stems, and the faintly rendered fly on the peach in the bowl suggest the fragility and temporality of life.

Modernist Idylls: Nature and the Avant-Garde, 1905–1930, Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania, March–May 1987.

Charles Demuth, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York (organizer). Venues: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, October 15, 1987–January 17, 1988; Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, California, February 25–April 24, 1988; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio, May 8–July 10, 1988; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California, August 7–October 2, 1988, no. 6. [exh. cat.]

Permanent collection installation, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 12–August 27, 1997.

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, July 1998.

L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950 (American Moderns, 1900–1950), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, July 25–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

Expanded Galleries of American Art with Loans from the Terra Foundation for American Art Collection, [Gallery 163] The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, April 15–July 2005.

Manifest Destiny, Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois and Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venue: Loyola University Museum of Art, May 17–August 10, 2008. [exh. cat.]

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Sotheby's, New York, New York (Sale 6247, December 5, 1991): lot 90. Text and ill. (color), lot 90.

Seven Plums in a Chinese Bowl, Charles Demuth. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, July 1998. Ill. (black & white).

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. American Moderns, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Text p. 18; fig. 4, p. 19 (black & white).

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Text p. 18; fig. 4, p. 19 (black & white).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. An American Point of View: The Daniel J. Terra Collection. Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2002. Text p. 172; ill. p. 172 (black & white).

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Brownlee, Peter John. Manifest Destiny / Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. (exh. cat., Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art and Loyola University Museum of Art, 2008. Text p. 34 (checklist).