Nov 04, 2010 - Sale 2228

Sale 2228 - Lot 229

Price Realized: $ 5,040
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
ASSESSMENTS OF ART AND LIFE AS DEATH NEARS HARTLEY, MARSDEN. Group of 4 Autograph Letters Signed, ("M.," "M.H.," or "Marsden"), to a young friend, Sgt. Richard Sisson ("Darlink," or "Dearest Lamb," or "Darling of my heart"). Together 14 pages, 8vo or mostly 4to, written on one side of each sheet. Each with the original envelope. New York or Corea, MN, 26 April-16 August 1943
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16 August: ". . . Picasso's later period with two eyed faces give me the creeps and I don't care for the kind of painting in them--but heaven knows he has done a lot of the very best painting in the 19th & 20th Century--he is such a scholar in the paint itself--just as Rouault is--as for myself I care for nothing . . . but good painting and if the painting in a picture is good, it becomes a good painting. . . ."
3 August: ". . . I just hated to leave the beautiful scene of Broadway at night--god how beautiful--with all the best youth of the nation swaying around in and out of the neon glow of the entrances--Jack Dempsey's--the Turf--McGuinness's & all that--knowing it was the last I should see of the white splendors until next spring and summer. . . .
". . . I gave the small but rare little Coptics to you not merely to celebrate your ' 1/4 century birthday' but to initiate you into the deeper sense of values in art because Coptics have done so much for me in my work and to enlarge your esthetic scope. It is nice to like Klee[;] I have some nice ones but as fine as he is--he is of course a minor artist and affords pleasure but not depth of emotion in the larger sense. . . . "
"Monday Eve, 6:30": "How I have missed you--you must have been getting hot messages from my direction the past days for I was at the point of sending you a letter as I do so want to see you. . . ."
26 April: "The one true Sisson will be most welcome at 7 P.M. tomorrow or Tuesday--& will beget his quota--of well, you know what. . . ."
The present letters appear in Townsend Luldington's Marsden Hartley: Biography of an American Artist, pp. 3-5, 279.
with--Townsend Luldington. Autograph Letter Signed, "Towny," to "Dear Dick [Richard Sisson] and Peter," asking for feedback about his biography: whether interesting, whether accurate, whether treating his homosexuality appropriately, etc. 2 pages, 4to, "Department of the Army" stationery, written on the recto and verso of a single sheet. West Point, 12 May no year.