Almost a century ago when the Island was graced with cutting edge artists and Pulitzer Prize-winning writers, many of them stayed at the now defunct St. George?s Hotel.

Masterworks Foundation artist-in-residence Donald Meyer will be holding a lecture today at the Bermuda National Gallery on a few of the characters who frequented Bermuda during that period.

Mr. Meyer is vice-president of The Philadelphia Sketch Club, which is America?s oldest artistss? organisation. His work is housed in numerous museum, university and prestigious private collections.

The lecture entitled ?Spring 1917: Hartley and Demuth at the St. George?s Hotel? will also feature slides of works created in Bermuda which are now housed at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Masterworks Collection. He will speak on the impact that these giants of American modernism had on world art.

The story of the artists? time in Bermuda is filled with wonderful characters as well as wonderful art. One of the players involved was Dr. Albert Barnes who founded the Barnes Foundation.

?He was kind of like a curmudgeon,? said Mr. Meyer. ?And he made a lot of money with something called Argyrol, which was an antiseptic. He eventually got together with Dr. Thomas Dewey, who was the famous American educator and philosopher, and he had an idea of founding a gallery, which he did.

?To make a long story short, when he died in 1951, he had collected one of the most pristine collections in America.?

In the Barnes Collection are three works done by Marsden Hartley while he was inBermuda.

Mr. Meyer learned this after reading an article by Michael Taylor, the curator of modern painting at the Philadelphia Museum, about the paintings which were done in 1916 and 1917.

?In 1916, Hartley and Demuth were in Province Town. (Hartley) was in a new phase and they didn?t really finish up, but decided after that summer to go somewhere different and they wound up in St. George?s ? together.?

While on Island the pair lived at the St. George?s Hotel, which was located where the St. George?s Club now is.

?He and Demuth painted in the top rooms,? Mr. Meyer added.

?Demuth for his part was turning to what was called precisionism (or Cubist realism). He changed his style or approach to things and he went on to paint what became of two of the greatest paintings in American art ? ?My Egypt? and the ?Figure Five?, which were directly related to his new style that he started here in Bermuda.?

But the plot thickens ? when the pair were in Province Town, there was an avant garde theatre group called the the Province Town Players and the artists became friendly with its playwright.

?The playwright was young, absolutely unknown, a merchant seaman, and son of the famous actor James O?Neill. His name was Eugene O?Neill,? Mr. Meyer said.

?In 1916 he started to write plays and in February 1917, Hartley wrote to his dealer Alfred Stieglitz, ?Eugene O?Neill is on the next boat?.

?So, all three of them were here at the same time in the hotel in St. George?s. O?Neill later became famous for living here at Spithead.

?Along with them was the French cubist painter Albert Gleizes, in the same hotel, at the same time, with his young bride Juliette.

?It was a party and, because it was during World War I, there were very few tourists during that time.?

What is important, however, stressed Mr. Meyer, was not just that they were in the hotel together, but the fact that they made superlative art.

?Hartley and Demuth were not what you?d call your ?scene painters?, they were at the cutting-edge of modern art.?

Meanwhile, he added: ?O?Neill was revolutionising modern theatre, and Albert Gleizes, even before he had married his young bride, had started an artists? commune in France.

?There is a little bit more colour to this whole thing for instance Eugene O?Neill was pretty notorious for a lot of things. He was not particularly good looking for the son of a stage actor.

?He was an Irish American, who drank a whole lot and it probably killed him. He was a multiple marrier, and his daughter married Charlie Chaplin.

?Of course Marsden Hartley and Charles Demuth were both homosexuals, but they weren?t each other?s types, however, O?Neill was pretty much their type.

?So, here you have these three guys in a hotel, an alcoholic merchant marine, who wants to be a playwright, who is checking these two gay guys out because he wants to put them in a play, and these two gay guys in the corner checking him out.

?Imagine this hotel dining room, O?Neill is at the bar and these two guys are at the table and in the corner you have the French couple on their honeymoon.?