In recent years the American painter Charles Demuth (1883-1935) has not commanded the kind of public attention he once did. Yet of all our early modernists, none was held in higher esteem by his fellow artists. Two of our greatest modern painters, Marsden Hartley and Stuart Davis, expressed their deep respect and admiration for him. “Charles loved the language of paint,” noted Hartley in 1935, shortly after Demuth’s death at the age of fifty-two. And indeed, in Demuth’s hands, the language of paint is truly compelling. Hartley’s further observation that Demuth “never made a bad picture” seems true as well, at least in the watercolors and temperas (the oils are another matter). Thus it was with unusual interest that one approached the Demuth retrospective organized by Barbara Haskell last fall for the Whitney Museum of American Art.[1] Given Demuth’s immense achievement, one had hoped to proceed easily and happily through the Whitney show; and in fact many visitors did just that, for the exhibition offered sufficient rewards to make it an event of considerable significance. But for others, nagging doubts began to set in not even halfway through, and by the end the show proved to be badly flawed. Unfortunately, the catalogue only reinforced one’s feeling of disappointment.

The problem began with the museum building itself, for the unyielding concrete and stone of the Whitney are antithetical to Demuth’s watercolors; and the ceiling and dark floors simply swallow up the available light. In this murky ambience, it