Charles W. Duncan (1887–1970) was an American avant-garde painter in the circle of artists that gathered around the photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz.
[1] Born in New York City to Mary Dolan and William Henry Duncan, Charles Duncan was described in the July 1914 issue of Camera Work as being “a sign painter and painter.” His Social Security application in 1936 states that he was then employed by the General Outdoor Advertising Company in the Bronx, New York.
Duncan was among Stieglitz's friends whom he invited to write articles discussing what 291 meant to them for the July 1914 issue of Camera Work.
[4] Correspondence found in 1998 reveals a long-running romantic relationship between Duncan and another avant-garde artist of the Stieglitz circle, Edith Clifford Williams.
[5] Duncan's only known surviving works in a public collections are an untitled abstract painting held by the Whitney Museum of American Art and Abstraction-Landscape in The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, co-owned by Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas.