Lot Essay
RELATED WORKS:
Elsa, oil on board, 20 x 16in., University Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Movement No. 8, Provincetown, oil on board, 23 1/4 x 19 1/4in., Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
Boat (Black and White Hull), oil on board, 16 x 11 3/4in., The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Trixie, oil on board, 24 x 20in., Private Collection
Sail Boat, oil on board, 15 5/8 x 11 1/2in., Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio
Abstraction, oil on board, 24 x 20in., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
The Boat, oil on board, 22 x 18in., Private Collection
After a three-year period of great creative activity while living in Berlin, Marsden Hartley returned to the United States in late 1915. Hartley's experience abroad had profound influence on his art, and during this time his intellectual and aesthetic awareness expanded enormously. Freshly exposed to the most progressive aesthetic currents of synthetic cubism, Hartley travelled to Provincetown, Massachusetts in the summer of 1916, where he began a series of paintings that included Movement No. 3, Provincetown. Hartley's work from the Provincetown period reveals the artist observing his surroundings and using American subject matter as a means of exploring more refined compositional arrangements.
During the war years Provincetown became a desirable vacation destination when the conflict in Europe made travel abroad impossible. The Provincetown summer colony consisted of New York's avant-garde cultural community of artists, writers, and actors, including Mabel Dodge, Marguerite and William Zorach, Charles Demuth, and Eugene O'Neill. The personalities of these individuals formed a dynamic chemistry that Hartley found inspiring, and he later described his time there as "the Great Provincetown Summer."
Hartley's choice to investigate American subject matter during the Provincetown summer may also have been the result of the lackluster reception of the German works from his Berlin period, such as Portrait of a German Officer of 1914 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). When Stieglitz exhibited Hartley's German paintings at 291 in April 1916 only a few were sold, forcing Hartley to rely on Stieglitz once again for financial support. With the opportunity to spend time on Cape Cod at Provincetown, Hartley turned away from subject matter with the symbolic resonance of the German paintings and instead focused on purely formal concerns.
During the summer of 1916 Hartley developed a more refined approach to painting, simplifying his compositions and reducing formal elements to unified geometric shapes in subtle, muted colors. Movement No. 3, Provincetown is exemplary of these cubist works, which are among the most aesthetically progressive of their kind, either American or European. Despite the abstract qualities of the Provincetown paintings, these compositions were nonetheless inspired by Hartley's observation of nature.
Hartley used the term 'movement' to describe paintings whose forms were abstracted from the observed appearance of nature. The artist derived Movement No. 3, Provincetown from his vision of sailboats seen along the shores of Cape Cod. The broad blue expanse suggests both sea and sky, and the upright forms are reminiscent of variously sized and shaped sets of billowing sails. The round and horizontal forms along the lower edge of the painting stabilize the vertical orientation of the composition much in the same way that a keel and hull stabilize a waterborne vessel.
Elsa, oil on board, 20 x 16in., University Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Movement No. 8, Provincetown, oil on board, 23 1/4 x 19 1/4in., Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
Boat (Black and White Hull), oil on board, 16 x 11 3/4in., The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Trixie, oil on board, 24 x 20in., Private Collection
Sail Boat, oil on board, 15 5/8 x 11 1/2in., Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio
Abstraction, oil on board, 24 x 20in., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
The Boat, oil on board, 22 x 18in., Private Collection
After a three-year period of great creative activity while living in Berlin, Marsden Hartley returned to the United States in late 1915. Hartley's experience abroad had profound influence on his art, and during this time his intellectual and aesthetic awareness expanded enormously. Freshly exposed to the most progressive aesthetic currents of synthetic cubism, Hartley travelled to Provincetown, Massachusetts in the summer of 1916, where he began a series of paintings that included Movement No. 3, Provincetown. Hartley's work from the Provincetown period reveals the artist observing his surroundings and using American subject matter as a means of exploring more refined compositional arrangements.
During the war years Provincetown became a desirable vacation destination when the conflict in Europe made travel abroad impossible. The Provincetown summer colony consisted of New York's avant-garde cultural community of artists, writers, and actors, including Mabel Dodge, Marguerite and William Zorach, Charles Demuth, and Eugene O'Neill. The personalities of these individuals formed a dynamic chemistry that Hartley found inspiring, and he later described his time there as "the Great Provincetown Summer."
Hartley's choice to investigate American subject matter during the Provincetown summer may also have been the result of the lackluster reception of the German works from his Berlin period, such as Portrait of a German Officer of 1914 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). When Stieglitz exhibited Hartley's German paintings at 291 in April 1916 only a few were sold, forcing Hartley to rely on Stieglitz once again for financial support. With the opportunity to spend time on Cape Cod at Provincetown, Hartley turned away from subject matter with the symbolic resonance of the German paintings and instead focused on purely formal concerns.
During the summer of 1916 Hartley developed a more refined approach to painting, simplifying his compositions and reducing formal elements to unified geometric shapes in subtle, muted colors. Movement No. 3, Provincetown is exemplary of these cubist works, which are among the most aesthetically progressive of their kind, either American or European. Despite the abstract qualities of the Provincetown paintings, these compositions were nonetheless inspired by Hartley's observation of nature.
Hartley used the term 'movement' to describe paintings whose forms were abstracted from the observed appearance of nature. The artist derived Movement No. 3, Provincetown from his vision of sailboats seen along the shores of Cape Cod. The broad blue expanse suggests both sea and sky, and the upright forms are reminiscent of variously sized and shaped sets of billowing sails. The round and horizontal forms along the lower edge of the painting stabilize the vertical orientation of the composition much in the same way that a keel and hull stabilize a waterborne vessel.