Marsden Hartley, The Painter of Maine

Oct 15, 2018

The American painter Marsden Hartley (1877 – 1943) is referred to today as “The Painter of Maine.” He wasn’t given that title by critics or his fans, but rather Hartley gave himself that moniker late in his life. It was a bit of a strange thing to call himself considering that aside from his childhood, he only spent a smattering of years living in Maine. And most of the years he did spend there were not pleasant. Hartley was the youngest of nine children. His mother passed away when he was only 8 years old. When he was 14, his family moved to Ohio, but his father forced him to stay behind in Maine and work another year in a factory. Later as an adult he commented upon hearing it that the sound of a New England accent was like a knife in his spine. Yet over time Hartley grew to see the place of his birth in a different light. He came to realize that the place in which we are raised works its way into the fabric of our being. The smell of the air, the look of the landscape, and yes perhaps even the twinge we feel when we hear our native accent—all of these things make us who we are in some fundamental way. When Hartley finally did return to Maine, five years before his death, he was an accomplished painter. He had seen the world and befriended many of the most famous and influential artists and writers of his time. He returned with a deep sense of who he was, and what the world was. The paintings he created in the last five years of his life blend abstraction, realism, regionalism and Modernism in ways that expose both the inner being of who he had become as a man, and the complicated tapestry that he realized defines the place where he was born.

A Peripatetic Soul

Throughout his entire life, one thing that truly defined Hartley was a longing to keep moving. After finishing his forced year of servitude at the factory back in Maine, Hartley joined his father and siblings and his new mother in law in their new home in Ohio, but only for six years. After studying on a scholarship at the Cleveland School of Art, he moved to New York City where he continued his studies and made friends with the artists and writers in Greenwich Village. When he was not studying at the New York School of Art and the National Academy of Design, he spent time mixing with poets, painters, photographers and philosophers. Although his paintings tended towards figuration, he was drawn towards the idea of expressing more than what is on the surface; towards expressing the mysteries of what is unseen.

Marsden Hartley - Landscape No. 24, 1909-1910. Oil on academy board. 12 × 14 in; 30.5 × 35.6 cm. Photo courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York

After ten years in New York, he went briefly to Maine and rented an abandoned farm. There, he began reducing his aesthetic voice, using sharp, clean lines and simplified forms. Alfred Steiglitz, with whom Hartley had become friends while in New York, showed some of these paintings in his famous 291 Gallery. Steiglitz realized the direction Hartley was moving in, and encouraged him to look to the Modernist painters in Europe. Hartley began studying Matisse and Picasso, and their work had an immediate effect. He embraced fauvist color theories and experimental brush strokes. He also broke free of traditional perspective, realizing that by altering the forms of his subjects he could reveal their true essence. Steiglitz was so impressed he offered to pay for Hartley to move to Europe. Hartley accepted, arriving in Paris in 1912, and right away fell in with Gertrude Stein and her circle of friends—the most prominent and influential members of the Western avant-garde.

Marsden Hartley - Untitled (Landscape, Song of Winter Series), 1908. Oil on board laid down on board. 9 × 12 in; 22.9 × 30.5 cm. Photo courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York

Discovering Abstraction

For four years, Hartley divided his time between France and Germany. His paintings from the time show an increasing interest in pure abstraction. He copied the works of Sonia Delaunay, experimenting with Orphic Cubism, and he mimicked artists like Francis Picabia and Georges Braque. In Germany, he befriended Wassily Kandinski, and also became friends with the German Expressionist painter Franz Marc. Blending their influences with those he had gained in France, Hartley created a series of paintings inspired by a German soldier with whom he was smitten. These stunning paintings blend symbolism, Orphic Cubism, Expressionism, and early Geometric Abstraction. They communicate the underlying essence of something glamorous and proud. They are heroic, and also deeply romanticized. Sadly, the romance disappeared completely when Germany instigated war. Hartley left Europe disappointed, returning to the US, and to his previous figurative style.

Marsden Hartley - Painting Number 49, Berlin, 1914-1915. Oil on canvas. 119 2/5 × 100 3/10 in; 303.3 × 254.8 cm. Photo courtesy Seattle Art Museum, Seattle

Yet even though American audiences had little appreciation for pure abstraction, Hartley developed ways to blend symbolic abstraction and painterly figuration in ways that made him unique amongst his peers. Despite their distinctly American content, paintings like “Valley Road” (1920) and “Landscape New Mexico” (1920) show the influence of Fauvism and Modernist accentuation of natural features. These paintings are figurative but they create emotional impact in abstract ways. Despite flourishing as an artist, however, Hartley never felt that he was at home. He returned to Europe for nine years after the war. Then he moved back to the United States, traveling from California to Massachusetts, and back to New York. Finally in 1937 he declared he was going to return to the state where he was born, announcing that he was going to become “the painter of Maine.” Rather than idealizing the place he was born, however, he used what he had ever learned to coax from his surroundings the highs and the lows of human existence. His Maine paintings reveal the loneliness he felt as a gay man in a culture where his lifestyle was stigmatized. They show his longing for connection to people, and his deep connection with nature. They are perhaps his least abstract works, and yet the depth with which they connect with audiences reveals the powerful talent Hartley developed for revelation the unseen, and the natural ability he had near the end of his life to celebrate the essence of place.

Featured image: Marsden Hartley - Storm Wave, 1939-1940. Oil on canvas. 18 × 24 in; 45.7 × 61 cm. Photo courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York
All images used for illustrative purposes only
By Phillip Barcio