Cemetery, New Mexico
While living in Berlin and Paris from 1923 to 1924, Hartley painted about thirty-five recollections of the New Mexico landscape that he had last seen when he visited Taos and Santa Fe in 1918–19. Remembering its sculptural topography, he evoked the natural wave rhythms in the land and sky. This scene is more detailed than most in the series and likely depicts the graveyard on the Taos Pueblo, located beside the ruins of the missionary church of San Geronimo, where converted native people were buried according to indigenous practices. Hartley typically painted from memory, in emulation of American artist Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917), whom he admired and whose portrait he painted imaginatively in 1938.
Artwork Details
- Title: Cemetery, New Mexico
- Artist: Marsden Hartley (American, Lewiston, Maine 1877–1943 Ellsworth, Maine)
- Date: ca. 1924
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 31 5/8 × 39 1/4 in. (80.3 × 99.7 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
- Object Number: 49.70.49
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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2010. Cemetery, New Mexico, Part 1
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