Hartley, Marsden

Hartley, Marsden, 1877–1943, American painter, b. Lewiston, Maine. He was educated in Cleveland, but early in his career (1899) went to New York City, where he studied under William Merritt Chase and at the National Academy of Design. In 1909 his landscapes were shown at the Stieglitz gallery. During the next 12 years he made three trips to Europe and one to the Southwest. His work showed the influence successively of the French and German moderns. In Berlin (1913–15), he painted strong works that combined cubist composition with expressionist handling, and he exhibited with Klee and Kandinsky in Munich. Although his early works were often almost entirely abstract, after 1920 Hartley returned to representation, often depicting nature with a forceful simplicity. Hartley is known for his still lifes and, most of all, for his paintings of the people and landscapes of Maine, the latter his first and last great subjects. He is represented in many leading American museums.

Bibliography

See his Somehow a Past (1996), ed. by S. E. Ryan; My Dear Stieglitz: Letters of Marsden Hartley and Alfred Stieglitz, 1912–1915 (2002), ed. by J. T. Voorhies; catalog by W. Mitchell (1970); biographies by T. Ludington (1992) and B. Robertson (1995); studies by G. R. Scott (1988), J. Hokin (1993), E. M. Kornhauser, ed. (2003), and D. M. Cassidy (2005).

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Hartley, Marsden

(born Jan. 4, 1877, Lewiston, Maine, U.S.—died Sept. 2, 1943, Ellsworth, Maine) U.S. painter. After attending the Cleveland School of Art, he settled in New York City but also lived sporadically in France and Germany. From 1900 he spent most summers in his native Maine, painting landscapes. He first exhibited them at Alfred Stieglitz's “291” gallery in 1909. In 1913 he exhibited with Der Blaue Reiter in Berlin and at the Armory Show. His early style of abstract painting with strongly outlined forms and brilliant colours evolved into a personal interpretation of Expressionism, most evident in his bold and brooding Maine landscapes. He produced a dramatic series of pastels and oil paintings of New Mexico (1918–20) and in 1932 a notable series of the volcano Popocatépetl in Mexico.