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Charles Demuth (1883-1935) zinnias and kiss-me-over-the-fence signed C. Demuth and dated '33, l.r. watercolor and pencil on paper 14 by 10in. (35.6 by 25.4cm.) Charles Demuth completed the present watercolor in 1933, just two years before his untimely death from diabetes. Demuth had been suffering from the debilitating effects of the disease since 1921 and his health had grown progressively worse over the years. The problem was compounded by the fact that when he was traveling, in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts, Demuth was often quite careless about his heath. It was only when he was at home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where his mother cared for him, that he felt well enough to work. In the last years of his life, Demuth's mother's flower garden became a vital source of inspiration for him. In 1933, Demuth created some of his finest floral watercolors from arrangements of the simple, old-fashioned flowers in his mother's garden. Fruit and floral still-lifes became an important component of Demuth's oeuvre in the 1920s, perhaps partly due to the influence of his close friend Georgia O'Keeffe. According to Alvord Eiseman, Demuth was a great admirer of O'Keeffe's work and at one time hoped to collaborate with her on a flower painting. During the 1920s, as his technical proficiency in watercolor increased, Demuth began experimenting with negative space, incorporating the bare white paper into his overall composition. Emily Farnham has discussed Demuth's innovation, writing: "Still another factor in Demuth which seems to have affected the New Realism is his frequent use of a pristine, immaculate, antiseptic white ground. It was notably in his watercolor still lifes that he habitually placed exquisitely delineated positive objects ... against a luminous unpainted ground" (Charles Demuth: Behind a Laughing Mask, Norman, Oklahoma, 1971, p. 185). In the floral still lifes of 1933, Demuth's ability to use the unpainted white paper to form flowers, leaves and folia