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 viewCollections
Label TextHartley wrote that his childhood love of flowers sparked his turn to art. “The foundation of all that was to come after was a strong love of flowers, widening later on to the mountains, then the sea—delicacy, strength, moving power.” Hartley was part of the first group of Americans who brought modernism to the United States, and he was exhibited by Alfred Stieglitz at his famed 291 gallery in New York. Like many artists around Stieglitz, Hartley, who greatly admired the American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), saw the natural world as full of spiritual significance, and flowers were a portal into this other realm.
