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MARSDEN HARTLEY

measurements note
9 1/2 by 7 1/4 in. (24.2 by 18.3 cm.)

flush-mounted, a Metropolitan Museum of Art collection stamp on the reverse, matted, in a modern white metal frame, 1916

PROVENANCE

The photographer to Marsden Hartley

Gift of Marsden Hartley to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1938

EXHIBITED

Washington, D. C., The Phillips Collection, In the American Grain: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz: The Stieglitz Circle at the Phillips Collection, September - December 1995

LITERATURE

Elizabeth Hutton Turner, In the American Grain: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz: The Stieglitz Circle at the Phillips Collection (Washington, D. C., The Phillips Collection, 1995, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 31 (this print)

Other prints of this image:

Greenough 429

Waldo Frank et al., America and Alfred Stieglitz: A Collective Portrait (New York, 1934), pl. XXIII-D

Doris Bry, Alfred Stieglitz: Photographer (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1965 and 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 10

Dorothy Norman, Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer (New York, 1973), pl. XXIX; Aperture edition, p. 77

Sarah Greenough and Juan Hamilton, Alfred Stieglitz: Photographs and Writings (National Gallery of Art, 1983, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 24

Pierre Apraxine and Lee Marks, Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company (White Oak Press, 1985), pl. 152

Richard Whelan, ed., Stieglitz on Photography: His Selected Essays and Notes (Aperture, 2000), p. 230

Sarah Greenough et al., Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries (National Gallery of Art, 2000, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 150

NOTE

Alfred Stieglitz's portrait of Hartley is one of a series of portraits made of artists, photographers, writers, and others who gravitated around Stieglitz's 291 gallery. Having established himself as one of the foremost fine-art photographers in the early phase of his career, Stieglitz devoted much of his energies between the years of 1905 and 1917 to promoting modern art through a series of landmark exhibitions at the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession at 291 Fifth Avenue, later simply known as 291. Stieglitz's own work during this time is dominated by some of his most famous photographs of New York City, his sublime studies made from the back window of 291, and portraits of the members of his circle. These included John Marin (see Lot 15), Arthur Dove, Charles Demuth, Abraham Walkowitz, Marius de Zayas, and Marsden Hartley (1877 - 1943), among others.

Raised in rural Maine, and later in Cleveland, Ohio, Hartley's artistic education began at the Cleveland School of Art. In 1899, he studied at the Chase School in New York City, where he received weekly critiques from William Merritt Chase; he continued his studies the following year at the National Academy of Design. Hartley was introduced to Stieglitz by the Irish poet Shaemas O'Sheel in 1909; Stieglitz was intrigued by the intense Hartley, and gave the artist his first formal exhibition at 291 in May of that year. At 291, Hartley gained exposure not only to the latest European work by Cézanne and Picasso, among others that Stieglitz exhibited, but also thrived on the lively intellectual discourse that flourished at the gallery.

Through Stieglitz's financial help, Hartley was able to spend a significant span of years in Europe, first in Paris and then in Berlin; this was the most active and innovative phase in Hartley's artistic development, and he quickly became an active participant in Europe's various intersecting artistic circles. He became friendly with Gertrude Stein, who purchased some of his paintings and became a loyal supporter. He met Wassily Kandinsky, whose book, On the Spiritual in Art, resonated with the strong current of mysticism he felt in himself and which became visible in his work. As William Innes Homer writes, 'Hartley did not imitate Kandinsky's style, nor did he subscribe to his intellectual theorizing, relying instead on the subjective inner core of his own personality, a mystical essence that he acknowledged as being distinctly American. He proudly announced to Stieglitz that he had created his own style, which, for lack of a better name, the artist christened subliminal or cosmic Cubism' (Alfred Stieglitz and the American Avant-Garde, Boston, 1977, p. 161).

Stieglitz's financial support of Hartley continued into the 1930s, and he showed Hartley's work in no fewer than nine solo exhibitions at 291, The Intimate Gallery, and An American Place between 1909 and 1937. The print offered here was given by Hartley himself to The Metropolitan Museum in 1938.

In Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs, Sarah Greenough locates 11 other prints of this image, all in institutional collections. Doris Bry has pointed out that Stieglitz thought highly enough of this image to give a print of it to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1924.