MARSDEN HARTLEY (1877 1943) Untitled (Ghostly Figures in a L

Sale 2678 - Lot 40

Price Realized: $ 11,875

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000

MARSDEN HARTLEY (1877-1943)
Untitled (Ghostly Figures in a Landscape).

Oil on board, 1909. 260x311 mm; 10¼x12¼ inches.

Provenance
The artist.
Robert and Nancy Laurent, Ogunquit, Maine.
Thence by descent to Paul and Margery Laurent.
Martin Diamond Fine Arts, New York, as Ghostly Figures (label).
Acquired from the above by current owner, New York, November 1976.

Literature
Elizabeth McCausland papers, 1838-1995, bulk 1920-1960, Series 6: Marsden Hartley, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

This work is included by Gail R. Scott in the Marsden Hartley Legacy Project: Complete Paintings and Works on Paper.

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Additional Details

Marsden Hartley was a member of the "Stieglitz Group," under the patronage of the famed gallerist and early champion of modern art in America, Alfred Stieglitz who arranged the artist's first solo exhibition in 1909 at his 291 gallery in New York. The present painting comes from this was a major turning point in Hartley's career; through Stieglitz he met and became influenced by other emerging artists such as Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, John Marin, and Georgia O'Keeffe.

Growing up in Maine and Cleveland, Hartley showed promise as a young artist and was funded by an art patron to study in New York in 1899. He studied with William Merritt Chase at his New York School and at the National Academy of Design. It was not until he gained the support of Stieglitz and the artist Arthur B. Davies, a senior member of the Stieglitz circle, that he could travel to Paris. In France, Hartley closely studied the Post-Impressionist and Cubist masterpieces and experimented in these styles. From Paris, he traveled through Europe and arrived in Berlin. Adopting a bold new style, Hartley exhibited with the avant-garde Der Blaue Reiter group in 1913. He revisited Berlin in 1914, producing his most iconic works of the War Motif series, following the death of his purported romantic partner, a German World War I soldier named Karl von Freyburg. These paintings are comprised of bold, sweeping colors, German insignia and undulating flattened shapes.

Ingenious and innovative, Hartley drew from the two-dimensionality of the Cubists and the spiritualism, raw emotion and subjectivity of the Expressionists. Hartley traveled around the world throughout his career, often deeply embedding himself in his surroundings. His works slowly became less abstract as his career advanced.