Beginning in the mid-1930s, Hartley, a restless artist who had previously been associated with the European avant-garde, proclaimed himself to be the "Painter from Maine." Between 1939 and 1942, he created more than eighteen bold paintings of Maine’s highest peak, Mount Katahdin, a geological landmark that, as the northernmost terminus of the Appalachian Trail, resonated with both regional and national symbolism. Hartley’s flat and rough-hewn depiction of form aligns his work with folk art, which audiences and critics embraced throughout the period as inherently American.
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the artist (until d. 1943); [Paul Rosenberg, New York, until 1944; sold on December 22, 1944 to Lowenthal]; Edith and Milton Lowenthal, New York (1944–his d. 1987); Edith Lowenthal, New York (1987–d. 1991, her bequest to MMA)
New York. Hudson D. Walker. "Marsden Hartley: Recent Paintings of Maine," March 11–30, 1940, no. 18.
Cleveland Museum of Art. "The 16th Exhibition of Contemporary American Oils," June 14–July 14, 1940, unnum. checklist (published in "Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art" 27 [June 1940], p. 99, as "Mt. Katahdin: Autumn, No. 2").
Detroit Institute of Arts. "Advance Trends in Contemporary American Art," April 4–30, 1944, no. 47.
Boston. Institute of Modern Art. "Four Modern American Painters: Peter Blume, Stuart Davis, Marsden Hartley, Jacob Lawrence," March 2–April 1, 1945, no. 33.
New York. Museum of Modern Art. "New York Private Collections," July 20–September 12, 1948, unnumbered cat. (lent by Mr. and Mrs. Milton Lowenthal).
Buffalo. Albright-Knox Art Gallery. "Expressionism in American Painting," May 10–June 29, 1952, no. 34.
New York. Whitney Museum of American Art. "Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection," October 1–November 2, 1952, no. 44.
Minneapolis. Walker Art Center. "Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection," November 28, 1952–January 17, 1953, no. 44.
Norfolk, Va. Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences. "Significant American Moderns," March 1953.
Fort Worth, Tex. Fort Worth Art Center. "Inaugural Exhibition," October 8–31, 1954, no. 40.
New York. American Federation of Arts Gallery. "Selections from the Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection," May 25–June 5, 1964, no catalogue.
Brooklyn Museum. "Modernist Art from the Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection," March 21–May 10, 1981, no. 34.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "American Art: The Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection," October 10, 1996–January 12, 1997, unnumbered cat. (p. 11; published in MMA Bulletin 54, summer 1996).
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. "Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries," January 28–April 22, 2001, unnumbered cat. (pl. 158).
Albany. New York State Museum. "Twentieth-Century American Landscapes from The Metropolitan Museum of Art," May 29–November 4, 2001, no catalogue.
Hartford. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. "Marsden Hartley," January 17–April 20, 2003, no. 91 (as "Mount Katahdin, Autumn No. 2").
Washington, D. C. Phillips Collection. "Marsden Hartley," June 7–September 7, 2003, no. 91.
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. "Earth, Sea, and Sky: Nature in Western Art—Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art," October 6, 2012–January 4, 2013, no. 103.
Beijing. National Museum of China. "Earth, Sea, and Sky: Nature in Western Art—Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 8–May 9, 2013, no. 103.
Art Institute of Chicago. "America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s," June 5–September 18, 2016, no. 20.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art [The Met Breuer]. "Marsden Hartley's Maine," March 15–June 18, 2017, unnumbered cat. (fig. 132).
Waterville, Me. Colby College Museum of Art. "Marsden Hartley's Maine," July 8–November 12, 2017, unnumbered cat.
"Art Brevities." New York Herald Tribune (March 24, 1940), p. E8.
Hudson Walker, Elizabeth McCausland, and Mary Bartlett Cowdrey. "Marsden Hartley." Archives of American Art Journal 8 (January 1968), p. 19.
Barbara Haskell. Marsden Hartley. Exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, 1980, p. 118, fig. 103.
John R. Lane inThe Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection. Exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum. New York, 1981, pp. 4–5.
Sarah Faunce inThe Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection. Exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum. New York, 1981, p. 32, no. 34, ill. p. 40 (color).
Vivien Raynor. "Art: Lowenthals Display Collection in Brooklyn." New York Times (May 1, 1981), p. C20.
Donna M. Cassidy. "'On the Subject of Nativeness': Marsden Hartley and New England Regionalism." Winterthur Portfolio 29 (Winter 1994), pp. 239–41, fig. 9.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. "American Art: The Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 54 (Summer 1996), pp. 3, 7, 11, 46, ill. (color and bw).
James M. Dennis. Renegade Regionalists: The Modern Independence of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry. Madison, Wisc., 1998, p. 237, fig. 147.
Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser inMarsden Hartley. Ed. Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser. Exh. cat., Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford. New Haven, 2002, p. 27.
Donna M. Cassidy inMarsden Hartley. Ed. Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser. Exh. cat., Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford. New Haven, 2002, p. 185.
Kristina Wilson inMarsden Hartley. Ed. Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser. Exh. cat., Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford. New Haven, 2002, p. 322, no. 91, ill. (color) p. 256 and title page.
Ilene Susan Fort inMarsden Hartley: The German Paintings, 1913-1915. Ed. Dieter Scholz. Exh. cat., Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Berlin, 2014, p. 127, fig. 16 (color).
Sarah Kelly Oehler inAmerica after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s. Ed. Judith A. Barter. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 2016, pp. 67, 69, 185, no. 20, fig. 8 (color), fig. 9 (1940 publicity photo).
Andrew Gelfand inMarsden Hartley's Maine. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2017, p. 27.
Randall R. Griffey inMarsden Hartley's Maine. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2017, pp. 133, 138–39, 168, fig. 132 (color).
Isabelle Duvernois and Rachel Mustalish inMarsden Hartley's Maine. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2017, pp. 162–63, 177 n. 14.
Donna M. Cassidy, Elizabeth Finch, and Randall R. Griffey inMarsden Hartley's Maine. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2017, p. 34.
Donna M. Cassidy, Elizabeth Finch, and Randall R. Griffey. "'My native continent': Maine's Influence on the Art of Marsden Hartley." Magazine Antiques 184 (March/April 2017), pp. 106–7, fig. 13 (color).
Holland Cotter. "'Marsden Hartley's Maine,' His Muse, First and Last." nytimes.com. March 16, 2017, ill. (color).
David Salle. "Marsden Hartley's Paintings." The Artist Project: What Artists See When They Look at Art. Ed. Chris Noey. New York, 2017, pp. 200–201, ill. (color).
Publishing and Marketing Assistant Rachel High discusses the work of Marsden Hartley and his relationship to his native state with Marsden Hartley's Maine co-curator Randall Griffey.
Marsden Hartley (American, Lewiston, Maine 1877–1943 Ellsworth, Maine)
1917
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