 Hello everybody, and welcome to this week's barns takeout, your weekly serving of art from the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. I'm Bill Perthys, the Bernard C. Watson Director of Adult Education, and today we're going up to the second floor to Gallery 17, which is a small corner gallery devoted largely to works on paper. And here we're looking at the north wall. It's actually anchored by a late painting by Henri Matisse. You see it here. And this wonderful tin glaze, I'll go in this tin glazed dish above it, one of the examples of the unique mixture of objects that Dr. Barnes used to create the ensembles that are really a signature of the Barnes Foundation. Around that, those works, you'll see watercolors. I'll zoom in a little more. Two works by Jules Pascal. But these works here, three on this side, three on this side, are watercolors by the American artist Charles DeMuth. He's an artist I've discussed in a previous takeouts. Now we're sort of stepping back a little bit and looking at yet another variation of DeMuth's work. And the work I want us to focus on is down here, the lower left hand corner. And here we see it in its full full view. It's called Jugglers with Indian Clubs and it's from 1917. It's a watercolor on what's called wove paper. So just really just watercolor paper essentially. Just as a recap in case you hadn't seen the earlier DeMuth talks that I gave, DeMuth was born in Lancaster, so just outside of Philadelphia in 1883. He went to the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry here in Philadelphia as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He traveled a fair amount and in 1912, he lived for a little more than a year and a half in Paris. Paris in 1912 was really the hot bit of modernism. And DeMuth had traveled there before, but this was an extended stay. And it was while he was there that he, among other things, took classes at what was called the Academy Moderne, an arts academy for a modern art academy. And it was there that also that he had the opportunity to practice his drawing skills, in particular because at this academy they did quick three-minute poses with models, which gave students the opportunity to really improve their quick sketch techniques. And this was a method called croaking, called croaking, and it was one practice that was made famous by the sculptor Auguste Rodin. And many of DeMuth's early works really take on a quality that resonates with Rodin's drawings. When DeMuth returned from Paris, he settled in Philadelphia and then eventually in New York, but Lancaster always remained a home base for him. Indeed, he readily returned in state for extended periods of time in Lancaster. And it was perhaps there at the Colonial Theatre in Lancaster that DeMuth would have seen the subject of this watercolor. These jugglers would likely have been part of a vaudeville, a traveling vaudeville troupe. In the 19th century and 20th century, vaudeville was perhaps the most popular form of entertainment. And what was vaudeville? It has origins going all the way back, probably to the 16th century in the tradition of the Commedia dell'Arte traveling performing groups in Europe, in Italy, and very well known in France. In fact, in the 18th century, these traveling troops were popular subjects for artists such as Boucher and Long Cray, all the way through to the 19th and early 20th century, where Cezanne and Picasso also painted a subject drawn from the Commedia dell'Arte tradition. But in the United States, American vaudeville was something quite different. It was usually a series of unrelated performances, little sort of sketches. And the variety of material that was presented in these performances was really quite remarkable. It could be anything from a scene from a Shakespeare play to acrobats, comedians, singers, dancers, or as we see here, jugglers. And it was in vaudeville in the late 19th or early 20th century that many very well known stars got their start. So people such as Jack Benny, W.C. Fields, Bob Hope, Abedin Costello, the Three Stooges, as well as Will Rogers all began their careers in vaudeville. So it was a real hotbed for performers. So what would have attracted Demith to painting these subjects? And I'll say that in the collection we have many examples of Demith painting from vaudeville as well as circus performers. Well, one reason probably would have been that these performances were fairly inexpensive, so they were easily accessible. Another remarkable thing about vaudeville is that it attracted, not only was it widely popular, but it also attracted audiences really that crossed all sorts of boundaries in terms of socioeconomic as well as racial. And this was nationwide. These traveling troops really went everywhere bringing these acts across the country. So the accessibility was certainly had been something that attracted Demith, but also I suspect because of the subjects that he chose, it was also the dynamic and the active quality, the animated quality of these subjects that attracted him as well. So taking that skill of being able to quickly draw something as he practiced in those croaky classes in the Academy Mauden and now going to these vaudeville and circus performances and seeing these acts in motion and having this skill to be able to capture that sense of animation quite deftly. And so I want to go back and show you this picture because it's a fairly small picture and you'll see in this ensemble that it's amongst many other small and even smaller objects. So it's a picture that could easily be overlooked, but it is well worth spending some time looking at. Some of the things that I appreciate about this picture, not just this picture but others, is Demith's technique and his skill at using watercolors. This can be a challenging meeting, particularly to get a sense of the quality that he's able to achieve. For one thing, the color has a light luminosity to it. And yet despite that, there's also remarkable variety in both texture as well as the opaque to transparent quality that Demith is able to achieve. So for instance, if we look at the we look at the jacket of the man on the right, notice how what variety there is in the quality of the color. These lighter areas, perhaps this is an area where Demith might have put the color down and then gone back over it with a cloth to sort of dab it a little bit, taking some of that color off and giving this wonderful variety where this deeper spot here or on the sleeve is an area where he might have gone back over the watercolor with some more color to give it a bit more of a sense of opaqueness. If we look at an area like this side, these striations are were perhaps created by him going over the color with just a wet brush, just with some water on it to loosen it a little bit and to add, again, varying textures. And so what the effect of that is that rather than flat areas of color, we have all of this variety. It adds a sense of decorativeness as well. And as I said, also a sense of texture. Another thing that I really find remarkable about Demith's technique is his quality of line. It has a fluid curvilinear quality to it, a delicacy to it. And very often, again, this is remarkable skill if we look at the woman, his ability to both adhere to and then sometimes move away from the edges, the boundaries that that line creates. So being able to keep the color, the watercolor within boundaries and then using, again, his technique to have it sort of wash out fade away. And again, in quality of line, giving us detail, but not an abundance of detail. So little touches like the slipper shoes of the man, the very delicate way in which he articulates that or the color and tie on the man, just these little these little details that just enliven in live in the picture. And then finally, in terms of technique is his ability to use open paper that is paper that doesn't have any any color on it. So the white area that we see in the man's trouser or the woman's dress, that's blank blank paper. But it functions as color. And this is a technique that he absolutely would have seen and admired in the watercolors of Paul Cézanne and Cézanne learning how effective open support canvas or paper could be in a composition. That's something he would have learned working with the with the Impressionist. Certainly it's a technique that he used both in his watercolors as well as in his his oil paintings. And now let's talk about how Demith composes this picture. It's I find it just this just absolutely captivating. So he pushes the the figures to each extreme to the left and to the right and then populates the center of the picture, the sort of space between them with all of these objects. So we have the Indian clubs themselves with their with their diamond colored pattern. These those clubs as they tumble yet are suspended mid air between the two figures and then behind them in what little bit of picture space there is because there isn't a lot. But behind them behind the figures is this accumulation of other objects other props perhaps for this juggling pair or for other other acts in in the vaudeville troops or the top hats the umbrella and the cane. This is a bouquet of flowers. This this is a candlestick boxes perhaps again for for juggling and this floor lamp. So it both it both the inclusion of these objects both creates a bit more context with within the within the picture. But because they populate the center it gives us these points of interest to look at you know and it gives a depth certainly to the to the subject. But what I think is so remarkable about this is the fact is the way that Demith draws our eye through this picture. What I mean by that is by putting the figures on either extreme and then populating the center with these objects as well as this this shape this sort of mandorla shape this sort of oval type shape that has this strong luminosity to it and that sets the objects in the background apart. What that does is it it encourages our eye to move across to see and pick up these little objects or the objects in the back from figure to figure so that our eye moves side to side in a kind of arching movement just in the same way that if we were audience members in the in the vaudeville theater watching this performance that our eye would be carried back and forth by those those throne and tumbling Indian clubs. So he's he's so skillfully able to convey the experience of what it would be like to see these performers in person in the static medium of of a watercolor. So giving us the the sensation of that active movement back side to side back and forth between the two jugglers even in this small yet such rich such rich watercolor and as I said this is one of many in the in the Barnes collection and as I said there's they tend to be small so I encourage you the next time you visit to keep your eye out for them because they're they're really just so so wonderful and so rewarding and as I said easy easy to overlook so keep your eye out for other this work in gallery 17 on the north wall as well as other works by Charles D myth in the Barnes collection. So until next time thank you very much. I'm Tom Collins new Bauer family executive director of the Barnes Foundation. I hope you enjoyed Barnes takeout subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. 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