Tuesday, August 31, 2021 – AN ARTIST WHO WORKED IN MANY GEOGRAPHIC AREAS

August 31, 2021

TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2021

The

456th Edition

From the Archives

Marsden Hartley

ARTIST

SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM

Originally photographed by Alfredo Valente. Image is courtesy of the Alfredo Valente papers, 1941-1978, in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Painter, printmaker. Born in Lewiston, Maine, Hartley followed his family to Cleveland, Ohio, where he won a scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art. In 1899 he moved to New York, studying first under William Merritt Chase and F. Luis Mora and the next year at the National Academy of Design. With financial assistance from Alfred Stieglitz, Hartley went to Europe in 1912, spending much of his time in Germany, where he met Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and other members of the Blaue Reiter group.

On the advice of Charles L. Daniel, a gallery owner who had earlier sponsored Paul Burlin’s stay in New Mexico, Hartley visited Taos and Santa Fe in 1918 and 1919. He was attracted by the landscape, which he thought “magnificent” and “austere,” by the primitive simplicity of local santos, and by Indian dances, which he proclaimed the one truly indigenous art form in America.

In the early 1920s, while living in Berlin, Hartley recalled the New Mexican landscape in a series of paintings far more turbulent and brooding than any he had done on location. The next decade he divided his time between Europe and America, but his last years were spent mostly in his native Maine, painting the rugged coastline and “archaic portraits” of local fishermen.

Marsden Hartley, Yliaster (Paracelsus), 1932, oil on paperboard mounted on particleboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program and by George Frederick Watts and Mrs. James Lowndes, 1988.53
To Americans in the 1930s, Mexico represented an ancient and deeply spiritual civilization much different from the industrial culture to the north. Artists and writers returned to the United States exalted by the myths and rituals that permeated the everyday lives of the Mexican people. Hartley made the trip in 1932 on a Guggenheim Fellowship, absorbing the primeval landscapes and surviving remnants of Aztec art. In a private library in Mexico City, he read that the medieval mystic Paracelsus had given the name yliaster to the base matter from which everything in the universe was made. This painting shows the volcanic peak of Popocatepetl rising from a red plain against the disk of the sun. Fire and earth contend with the intense blues in the sky and lake, completing the four elements of earth, air, fire and water that Paracelsus described.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006

Marsden Hartley, Waxenstein, 1933, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1972.118

Marsden Hartley, Popocatepetl, Spirited Morning– Mexico, 1932, oil on board, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Sam Rose and Julie Walters, 2004.30.3
During his visit to Mexico City in 1932, Marsden Hartley was entranced by the two snow-capped volcanoes, Popocatépetl and Ixtaccihuatl, surrounding the city. He devoted much of his time to studying ancient Aztec and Mayan artifacts and primordial myths of creation. According to legend, a Tlaxcaltecas chief promised the hand of his beautiful daughter Iztacc to the brave warrior Popo. Falsely told that her lover had been killed in battle, the girl died from grief. When the young warrior returned, he took her body into the hills and knelt beside her to keep watch. To protect them, the gods covered their forms in eternal snow.

Marsden Hartley, Red Tree, 1910, oil on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Flora E. H. Shawan from the Ferdinand Howald Collection, 1966.33.1
Marsden Hartley’s mother died when he was young, and he found comfort and companionship in the countryside around his home. This affinity for nature remained with him his entire life, and he traveled to many countries to paint the landscape. (Kornhauser, Marsden Hartley, 2002) He spent the summer of 1910 in North Lovell, Maine, creating brightly colored images of the mountains and forests. In Red Tree, Hartley placed the viewer at the top of a hill, looking down through the dense trees to a small clearing. The bulbous shapes, curved trunks, and vivid colors create an intense scene that reflects the artist’s restless energy.

“The inherent magic in the appearance of the world about me, engrossed and amazed me. No cloud or blossom or bird or human ever escaped me.” Hartley, Adventures in the Arts, 1921, reprinted in Kornhauser, Marsden Hartley, 2002

Marsden Hartley, Pink Begonias, 1928-1929, oil on wood panel, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Edith S. and Arthur J. Levin, 2005.5.37

TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY SEND TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM

MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

THE CLOISTERS
M. FRANK, NINA LUBLIN, ARLENE BESSENOFF, ALEXIS VILLAFANE, HARA REISER, LAURA HUSSEY, THOM HEYER, MITCH ELINSON
ALL GOT IT EARLY ON MONDAY MORNING!!

Text by Judith Berdy
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