Elizabeth Meyer
Head of Auction Administration
PROPERTY FROM A NEW YORK COLLECTION
Lot 87▲
Marsden Hartley(1877-1943)Still Life with Calla 24 x 19 1/2in
22 November 2016, 14:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$217,500 inc. premium
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Marsden Hartley (1877-1943)
Still Life with Calla
oil on canvas
24 x 19 1/2in
Painted circa 1928-29.
oil on canvas
24 x 19 1/2in
Painted circa 1928-29.
Footnotes
Provenance
The artist.
Estate of the artist.
William H. Bender, Jr., Bronxville, New York, by 1958.
Estate of the above.
Private collection, 1974.
Sid Deutsch Gallery, New York, acquired from the above, 1980.
Private collection, Pennsylvania, 1981.
Sale, Sotheby's, New York, May 24, 2006, lot 156.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.
Exhibited
New York, Babcock Galleries, Davis, Dove, Hartley, Marin, Sheeler, May 1-July 11, 2007, no. 22.
New York, Bruce Silverstein Gallery, Seven Americans: Demuth, Dove, Hartley, O'Keeffe, Marin, Stieglitz and Strand, September 6-October 20, 2012, n.p., pl. 10, illustrated.
Greenville, South Carolina, Greenville County Museum of Art, Arlie Kuntz, Marsden Hartley and American Modernism, August 6-September 21, 2014.
New York, Driscoll Babcock Galleries, Art is Long, Life is Short: Marsden Hartley and Charles Kuntz in Aix-en-Provence, January 15- March 7, 2015.
Literature
Volume of Photographs of Paintings, Pastels and Drawings from the Estate of Marsden Hartley, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., neg. no. 193, illustrated.
J. Driscoll and T. Ludington, Charles Philip Kuntz, Marsden Hartley: Arising and Converging in Aix, Greenville, South Carolina, 2014, pp. 84, 99, illustrated (as Flowering Plant).
Marsden Hartley was among the finest of America's first generation of modern artists. In fact, in 2014 Roberta Smith wrote that, "Before Jasper Johns or Jackson Pollack, there was Marsden Hartley, America's first great modern painter of the 20th century." (New York Times, June 12, 2014) From modest origins in Maine, he grew to become perhaps the most cosmopolitan painter of his era. Before 1910, Alfred Stieglitz had exhibited his work and he became a cornerstone of the illustrious Stieglitz Circle that included, among others, Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur Dove, John Marin and Charles Demuth. He met Gertrude and Leo Stein in Paris in 1912 and became part of their group of important European and American artists, and in 1913 his work was included in the seminal international Armory Show exhibition in New York.
The present work was recorded in the artist's estate records as Still Life with Calla yet it has also been referred to as Flowering Plant in more recent literature. The work dates from about 1928 to 1929, a period in the artist's career in which he was happy, producing at a high level and focused specifically on still life themes. Hartley's interest in floral subjects is perhaps reflective of what other artists were working on during that period. Even his friends, Demuth and O'Keeffe, were drawn to the simplicity of the form and color of the flower, both producing major paintings of flowers in the 1920s. Hartley's Still Life with Calla is no different in that he masterfully renders the subject flower with vibrant, colorful brushwork, complementing the simplicity of its design and its powerfully direct poetic introspection.
