The Death of Nana 1915

Charles Demuth made this watercolor painting, The Death of Nana, with all its inky washes, sometime around 1915. The paint has a life of its own, doesn't it? It must have been pooling and bleeding and trickling down the page as he worked. I imagine Demuth, brush in hand, building this scene of women in hats, layering thin washes to create form and depth. What was he thinking? Maybe about the fleeting nature of life, the way it slips through our fingers like watercolor on paper? Or how a few strokes of paint can evoke an entire world of emotion? Those dark washes, especially around the figures, have a haunting quality. Like the memory of a dream, fading at the edges. The hats, though, what about the hats! So dramatic. Painting is like keeping up a conversation with all the artists who ever lived. And a painting like this— it's an invitation into that conversation, a chance to think, to feel, and to see the world in a new way.