Artist Charles Demuth often jokingly referred to Lancaster, the town where he was born and lived almost all of his life, as the Province.

The conventional wisdom has always been that Demuth's frail health — he was a diabetic at a time when insulin was just beginning to be used — kept him tied to his hometown and his family, much to his dismay.

But Lancaster was no backwater for Demuth, one of the 20th century's most important modernist painters.

Demuth constantly found inspiration in Lancaster's burgeoning industrialism, in the water towers, grain elevators and smokestacks that were pushing the city into the 20th century and would become the subjects of his most iconic paintings.

Just how important Lancaster was to Demuth's work is the subject of a new exhibit at the Amon Carter Museum in Forth Worth, Texas, where "Chimneys and Towers: Charles Demuth's Late Paintings of Lancaster" opens Friday.

The exhibit, curated by Betsy Fahlman, who lived in Lancaster and taught at Franklin & Marshall College for several years in the 1970s, will run through Oct. 14. From there it will move to the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Fla., from Nov. 10 to Jan. 20, 2008, and then on to the Whitney Museum in New York from Feb. 23 to April 27, 2008.

The exhibit features some of Demuth's most famous paintings, including "My Egypt" (1927) and "Buildings, Lancaster" (1930), both on loan from the Whitney, and the title painting, owned by the Amon Carter Museum, which specializes in American art.

The exhibit also includes sketches Demuth did in preparation for his oils.

"Many scholars say Europe and New York were important to Demuth, but without Lancaster, there was no artist," says Fahlman, who is a professor of art history at Arizona State University and a leading Demuth scholar. "Such a strong sense of place is infused in his art."

The same was true of many of Demuth's watercolors, particularly the vaudeville paintings inspired by trips to the Fulton and other local theaters.

But while Demuth was an exquisite watercolorist, the oils in "Chimneys and Towers" are the works that helped redefine American art in the first third of the 20th century, according to Fahlman.

"Demuth's late precisionist paintings inspired by industrial sites are among the most important in the history of American modernism," she says. "While he possessed an astute understanding of the latest aesthetic developments in Europe, these paintings affirm the importance of place to a painter who, as part of a broad cultural discussion, reassessed what it meant to be an American artist."

That doesn't mean the public readily accepted them.

"He only sold one in his lifetime, "My Egypt," which went to the Whitney," Fahlman says. "His watercolors sold well. The public wanted his flowers and still lifes."

Even some national art critics had their doubts according to the reviews Fahlman read.

"Many thought they were odd. Some had these evocative titles," she says. "For people who loved the flowers and the boneless chicken vaudeville paintings, how do you deal with these stern, iconic architectural paintings?"

For Fahlman, who curated the 1983 Demuth exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Lancaster's Heritage Center, the greatest revelation in this exhibit is just what an important role medicine played in the creation of these paintings.

Demuth was diagnosed with diabetes at a time when the only treatment was starving the patient. Eventually, most people died, either of diabetic complications or of starvation.

"Demuth didn't have the energy to work," Fahlman explains. "His eyesight began to go."

Enter the hero of the story, art collector and well-known malcontent Albert Barnes.

"He came to own 50 Demuths, and the money allowed Demuth to get the insulin treatments he needed to survive," Fahlman says. "I'm not sure Demuth would have been alive if it weren't for Barnes, who was a doctor and encouraged him to look at treatment."

In the book Fahlman has written to accompany the exhibit, a number of letters between Demuth and Barnes are published. They come from the Barnes Foundation and have never been published before.

"Even though he has a reputation for not being very nice, Barnes comes out the hero in this," she says. "He was very helpful to Demuth."

She read numerous accounts about the earliest treatments using insulin. Contrary to written reports, Demuth was not one of the first people in the country to receive insulin shots, Fahlman says, but it was still a new procedure when he began taking insulin.

"People referred to it as a resurrection," Fahlman says.

She believes that Demuth's return to relative good health, at least for a while, pushed him to make a grander statement with the oils.

"They are bigger paintings," she says. "And he knew they were important."

The exhibit includes the last oil painting Demuth is known to have painted, "After All" (1933). He died in 1935.

A number of Demuth's sketches are featured, but Fahlman notes that he wasn't much of a draftsman.

"He didn't do elaborate studies of his paintings," she says. "He would make sketches on site and write down color notations, then he would go back to his studio (at his home at 120 E. King St.) and work."

The Amon Carter Museum specializes in American art and has been doing a series of exhibits focusing on specific artists from the 19th century.

When they turned to the 20th century, Demuth was their first choice, in large part because the museum owns the famous "Chimney and Water Tower," featuring what was then the Armstrong Cork plant.

"I had worked on Demuth for so long, I was the logical choice to curate," says Fahlman with a laugh.

CONTACT US: jholahan@LNPnews.com or 481-6016