Provincetown Dunes 1914

Charles Demuth painted these ‘Provincetown Dunes’ with watercolour, and you can tell he really let the medium do its thing. The way the colours bleed into each other suggests he embraced the unpredictability of the water, letting it carry the pigment where it may. Look at the top right corner, you can see how he’s worked with the translucency of the paint to create a hazy, dreamlike effect. There's a real sense of layering here, with washes of colour building up to create depth and form. It reminds me a bit of some of Marsden Hartley's landscapes, particularly in the way he uses colour to evoke a sense of place and atmosphere. But Demuth’s got this lightness, this almost ethereal quality that’s all his own. With this work, Demuth reminds us that art is not about control, but about embracing the unexpected, letting the materials guide the way.