Marsden Hartley

Maddie Fenton

Painting I

Molly Zimmer

Marsden Hartley

Marsden Hartley was an American Modernist painter born in Lewiston, Maine. He was the youngest child in his family and his mother died when he was eight years old. His birth name was Edmund Hartley, but when his father remarried Martha Marsden, he took the name of Marsden when he was in his twenties. When he was fourteen, the rest of his family moved to Ohio, and left Hartley in Maine. He credits a large amount of his work to this experience because it evoked so much pain and loneliness. Hartley is known for his extreme texture and dark palette with oil paint in his paintings. Many critics admire his work for his erotic and deeply expressive and energetic forms. Hartley mainly painted landscapes of Maine’s jagged and rugged coastal terrain and its inhabitants, as Maine was his lifelong inspiration. However, he is also known for his series on Germany, Novia Scotia, and New Mexico.

Mount Katahdin (Maine), Autumn #2

oil on canvas

1939

Church At Head Tide, Maine

oil on canvas

1938

Log Jam, Penobscot Bay

oil on canvas

1940

Canuck Yankee Lumberjack at Old Orchard Beach, Maine

oil on canvas

1940

Storm Down Pine Point Way, Old Orchard, Maine

oil on canvas

1941-1943

Works Cited

Cotter, Holland. “‘Marsden Hartley’s Maine,’ His Muse, First and Last.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Mar. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/arts/design/marsden-hartleys-maine-his-muse-first-and-last.html. 

“Marsden Hartley's Maine.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I.e. The Met Museum, www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2017/marsden-hartley. 

“Marsden Hartley's Maine.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I.e. The Met Museum, www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2017/marsden-hartley.