Charles Demuth was a versatile watercolorist who developed an artistic technique that came to be known as Precisionism. He met WCW during his student days in Philedelphia, and the two remained close friends throughout their lives. He painted his famous "I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold" after a line from Williams' 1921 poem from Sour Grapes:
The Great Figure
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city
WCWs describes the process of this poem in his Autobiography (p. 172):
The Great Figure
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city
WCWs describes the process of this poem in his Autobiography (p. 172):
"Once on a hot July day coming back exhausted from the Post Graduate Clinic, I dropped in as I sometimes did at Marsden [Hartley]'s studio on Fifteenth Street for a talk, a little drink maybe and to see what he was doing. As I approached his number I heard a great clatter of bells and the roar of a fire engine passing the end of the street down Ninth Avenue. I turned just in time to see a golden figure 5 on a red background flash by. The impression was so sudden and forceful that I took a piece of paper out of my pocket and wrote a short poem about it."Two other images by Demuth are evidence of his innovative style:
