Still Life
Marsden HARTLEY
(American, 1877-1943)
Still Life
Dateca. 1929-1930
Mediumoil on cardboard
Dimensionsoverall: 25 3/4 × 18 3/4 in. (65.4 × 47.6 cm)
frame: 29 × 22 in. (73.7 × 55.9 cm)
ClassificationPAINTINGS
Credit LineSBMA, Gift of Wright S. Ludington
Object number1950.3
Subject(s)
- flower
- fruit
- still lifes
- flowers
Collection
- 20th century American
- American
Sub-Collection(s)
- Modernism
On View
On viewLabel TextMarsden Hartley was an active participant in the New York avant-garde associated with Alfred Stieglitz’s legendary Gallery 291, credited with introducing American audiences to European Modernism. In emulation of the French artist, Paul Cézanne, he embraced still life as a means of pictorial investigation, developing his own geometric distillation of form. In this work, for example, Hartley fuses the table top and background into interlocking Cubist-like shards of color. Hartley often encoded his still-life compositions with personal meaning, referencing the most intimate parts of his life, including his grief at the loss of the man he loved to combat during World War I.
