Marsden Hartley Paintings

Marsden Hartley Lemons and Pear, circa 1922-23 Oil on canvas 9 x 10 3/4 inches Provenance: Adelaide Shaffer Kuntz, Bronxville (Hartley’s friend and patron) Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York (acquired from the above) Private Collection, Stamford, Connecticut (acquired from the above) Barridoff Galleries, Portland, Maine, April 7, 1984, Lot 29 (as Still Life with Pear and Lemons) Richard Ward Foster (acquired at above sale) Sotheby's New York, American Art, October 6, 2017, Lot 32 Private Collection (acquired from the above) Exhibited: (possibly) Kantstrasse, Berlin, Private showing in artist’s studio, 1923. (possibly) New York, Bertha Schaefer Gallery, Still Life Painting by European and American Painters, 1944. Born in Lewiston, Maine, Marsden Hartley became one of the most famous early modernist artists of twentieth-century American art, known for landscapes, still lifes, and some portraits. His painting showed a focus on monumental shapes, especially clouds and landscape forms, and his unique style has been described by critic Sadakichi Hartmann as "an extreme and up-to-date impressionism" and "emerging modernism that evolved through Impressionism". (Gerdts 291) He had a lonely, insecure childhood because his mother died when he was eight years old, and he was raised by an older sister when his father left to remarry. He studied art in Cleveland, Ohio and then in 1898 went to the Chase School in New York and at the National Academy of Design. He continued to spend much time in Maine painting landscapes, and by 1909 had his first exhibition, which was held at New York Gallery 291, run by Alfred Stieglitz. There he became involved with a social circle of modernists that included Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur Dove, and John Marin. In 1912, he first went to Europe where he had further exposure to modernism, and from 1913 to 1915 he was in Germany. In Paris, he experimented with Cezanne-like still lifes and was befriended by Gertrude Stein. In Germany, he was influenced by Expressionism, and especially by military pageantry. It is said that his greatest contribution to early 20th-century American modernism has been his brilliant synthetic military icons known as German Officer Portraits. He developed a close homosexual relationship with a handsome young Prussian officer who was killed in World War I. Being encouraged by Stieglitz to explore American subjects, Hartley turned to American Indian objects...

On verso: Marsden Hartley

Bold outlines and strong weighty forms coalesce with a compositional delicacy that forms the hallmark of Hartley's work. The work has a long and distinguished provenance and exhibit...