Demuth did a number of architectural paintings in both his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Provincetown, Massachusetts where this piece was created. The golden steeple reaching up into the sky is the top of what was preivously a church but now serves as the Provincetown Heritage Museum. Demuth’s Precisionist approach to painting involves a balance between realism and abstraction. The careful lines and planes of the buildings intersect at just the right points to imply the directionality of the sun as well as the depth of the shadows. He often used houses, churches, and factories as his subject matter for their angular structures which perfectly lended themselves to the reduction of objects to their basic geomtertic forms that was foundational to the development of his style.

SKU: 53467
Creator: Charles Demuth
Date: 1920
Original Medium: watercolor and graphite on board
Original Size: 24 x 20 in.
Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York