(1877-1943)
In February 1914, Marsden Hartley wrote to Alfred Stieglitz on stationery from the “home of Nina Wilcox Bull” on 80 Rumsey Road in Buffalo, that she “had agreed to have an exhibition of his paintings after the Albright Art Gallery refused.” He also recognized Mabel Dodge Luhan’s early success as a patron when he proclaimed: “Mabel Dodge is really the most remarkable woman I ever knew…. She is so intelligent and so sympathetic and like yourself a real creator of creators.”
In Cleveland, Ohio in 1914, Marsden Hartley exhibited modernist abstractions that incorporated mysterious figures and symbols in flat, geometric patterns. Hartley was one of several artists admired by Henry Keller and his Cleveland School of Art students, including Charles Burchfield, who were eager to embrace European ideas that challenged American realism.
After living in Europe for much of his adult life, Hartley returned to the United States in 1930 and settled in New England. His style changed to reflect American themes, depicting the mountainous terrain of New Hampshire and the rugged life in coastal villages of Nova Scotia and Maine, where he had experienced an unhappy childhood. He imposed a sense of landscape derived from Cezanne through bolder, more expressionist color and lively brushstrokes. Hartley’s northern landscapes have a spiritual quality that conveys his profound, emotional attachment to nature.
On February 6, 1946, Charles Burchfield wrote about returning to an exhibition in the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo to see Hartley’s work again, so it appears that his admiration continued long after the artists left Cleveland.