Charles Demuth, 1883 - 1935, was an American watercolourist who turned to oils late in his career, developing a style of painting known as Precisionism. "Search the history of American art," wrote Ken Johnson in The New York Times, "and you will discover few watercolours more beautiful than those of Charles Demuth. Combining exacting botanical observation and loosely Cubist abstraction, his watercolours of flowers, fruit and vegetables have a magical liveliness and an almost shocking sensuousness." Demuth was a lifelong resident of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The home he shared with his mother is now the Demuth Museum, which showcases his work. His most famous painting, The Figure Five in Gold, was inspired by his friend William Carlos Williams's poem The Great Figure. The Great Figure". It's a decidedly American work made at a time when U.S. artists were just moving beyond European influences. It's a reference to the intertwined relationships among the arts in the 1920s, a moment of cross-pollination that led to American Modernism. And it anticipates pop art.