Marsden Hartley’s Maine

Marsden Hartley, Mt. Katahdin (Maine), Autumn #2, 1939–40. Oil on canvas, 30 1⁄4 x 40 1⁄4 in. (76.8 x 102.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection, Bequest of Edith Abrahamson Lowenthal

This exhibition will explore Marsden Hartley’s complex, sometimes contradictory, and visually arresting relationship with his native state—from the lush Post-Impressionist inland landscapes with which he launched his career, to the later roughly rendered paintings of Maine’s rugged coastal terrain, its hardy inhabitants, and the magisterial Mount Katahdin.

Hartley’s renowned abstract German series, New Mexico recollections, and Nova Scotia period have been celebrated in previous exhibitions, but Marsden Hartley’s Maine will illuminate Maine as a critical factor in understanding the artist’s high place in American art history. Maine served as an essential slate upon which he pursued new ideas and theories. It was a lifelong source of inspiration intertwined with his personal history, cultural milieu, and desire to create a regional expression of American modernism.

The exhibition is organized by the Colby College Museum of Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It is made possible by the Henry Luce Foundation, Bank of America, Betsy Cohen and Edward Cohen/Aretê Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Everett P. and Florence H. Turner Exhibition Fund.

A grant from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art has supported the Colby College Museum of Art’s scholarly contributions to the exhibition catalogue published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The catalogue is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Charles Butt, and Laura and Robert W. Stone.