The Nut, Pre-Volstead Days - Charles Demuth Art Print

$30USD
  • Printed in USA, UK, EU & AUS
  • Archival grade fine art paper and canvas
  • Giclée printing stays vibrant up to 100 years
  • FSC® paper & wood + non-toxic pigment inks

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Charles Demuth painted The Nut (Pre-Volstead Days) in 1916, with last call already rattling in the pipes. Three years before the Volstead Act drained the taps, this Greenwich Village saloon still sweats amber.

This is pre-Prohibition nightlife at the moment a saloon counter becomes a stage. Before the country went dry, a nut meant a dandy with more nerve than sense. And here, a dandy barkeep in a cream suit leans loose across the bar, his rust red necktie flickering like a struck match. Facing him, a figure in a black coat blooms cobalt blue at the shoulder. Rouged cheeks. Mouth open mid-sentence.

The watercolor keeps its secrets half-finished. Graphite chandeliers hang in outline, never granted color, and blotted umber pools where elbows rest on ochre wood. Demuth was a gay artist who haunted New York cafés and vaudeville halls between trips home to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He knew how a glance travels down a counter before Prohibition arrives to end the party.

One stemmed glass waits near the rail, sketched thin and ready to lift. American modernism loosens its collar here, and queer art history writes itself in wet pigment. Hang this art print. Let the conversation stay poured.

Origin Story

Charles Demuth was an alchemist of pigment and line, conjuring bodily rapture from watercolors that glowed like the fevered skin of nude males at rest and play.

Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1883, he flayed the mundane world into erotic abstraction, rendering industrial landscapes as sacraments of modernity and desire. Demuth’s portraits of queer longing — flower-lipped, cigarette-fingered — trembled on the edge of myth, each stroke a sinuous hymn to the unspoken.

Demuth died in 1935, leaving behind a canon of luminous disobedience: bridges and silos and lovers, all trembling under the weight of his fierce, unsparing gaze.

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Produced on Demand

Produced after you purchase at print labs across the US, UK, EU & AUS. Significantly minimising landfill waste by only making things people actually want.

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Produced, quality checked, packed with care and handed to trusted shipping carriers within 72-96 hours on average.

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Cost

Free shipping to Continental United States, Canada, UK, EU, Australia, New Zealand & more: see full list here.

Production + Delivery =

US: 4-9 days • Canada: 5-12 days • UK: 4-9 days • EU: 5-10 days • AUS: 4-9 days • NZ: 5-12 days • Rest of the world: 3-4 weeks

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Sent carbon neutral at no extra charge.

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