Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for an American Modernism Chronology of Marsden Hartley’s Life

duction to an artist in New York.There, Hartley is taken to Alfred Stieglitz’s influential gallery, 291, and immedi- ately embraced by the well-known photographer and champion of modern art. That May, Hartley is given a major solo exhibition at 291.

SPRING 1912 Stieglitz makes it possible for Hartley to depart for Europe. He travels to Paris, where he meets Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and other members of the avant garde.

Unknown photographer, Untitled (Marsden Hartley in New Mexico),c.1918. Photograph. SPRING 1913 Leaves Paris for Berlin, having become Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. interested in the ideas of the artist Wassily Kandinsky and the Blaue Reiter movement. JANUARY 4, 1877 Born Edmund Hartley in 1877 in Lewiston, Maine, the youngest of eight children. 1913–15 During this period, Hartley is at the forefront of the revolutionary experimentations in abstraction MARCH 4, 1885 Mother dies. Hartley spends the next taking place in Germany, becoming one of the first eight years living with an older, married sister in American artists to produce avant-garde modernist art Auburn, Maine, while several of his sisters are sent to at the level of European work. His painting in Germany live in Ohio. culminates in two important series, the Amerika series AUGUST 20, 1889 Hartley’s father marries Martha and the War Motif series. Marsden, whose last name Hartley later adopts as his first. OCTOBER 24, 1914 Karl Von Freyburg, a man Hartley Hartley’s father and his new wife move to join some of was in love with, is killed in action in the early months Hartley’s sisters in Cleveland, Ohio, leaving him behind. of World War I. Later that year, Hartley eulogizes him 1892–93 At age fifteen, Hartley leaves school to work in one of his most well-known works, Portrait of a in a Maine shoe factory.The following year, he finally German Officer. joins his father in Ohio. DECEMBER 1915 Leaves Germany for the United States, 1898–99 Studies at the Cleveland School of Art. He the war having made life in Germany impossible. He later describes his first exposure to Transcendentalism at spends the next few years living in Provincetown, the school, through a volume of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Massachusetts and Bermuda, and painting muted, semi- writings, as a pivotal moment in his life. cubist paintings.

1899–1904 Studies art in New York, first at the Chase JUNE 14, 1918 Arrives in Taos, New Mexico. Spends School for a year, and then at the National Academy time with art patron Mabel Dodge as she is building her of Design. Taos home. Creates bright and naturalistic pastels of the Taos landscape while exploring and camping in the area. WINTER 1906–07 Begins a series of post-impressionist Maine landscapes. NOVEMBER 6, 1918 Moves to Santa Fe after growing dis- satisfied with the Taos landscape and artistic community. MARCH 1909 Brings his paintings to Boston and shows them to the artist Charles Prendergast and his brother WINTER 1918–19 Writes and publishes a series of essays Maurice. Impressed, they write Hartley a letter of intro- about American modernism including “Aesthetic (over) Sincerity” and “America as Landscape,” both published 1924 Travels to New York City for business, then arrives in El Palacio, the magazine of the Museum of New in Paris and continues work on the New Mexico Mexico, in December 1918. He also publishes the first in Recollections series, which he finishes that winter. a series of essays on American Indian art based on the WINTER 1925 Hartley’s New Mexico work is shown Pueblo dances he witnesses in New Mexico in the for the first time in the exhibition at the Briant-Robert November 1918 issue of The Dial. Gallery in Paris from January 19 –February 19.They are FEBRUARY 1919 Leaves New Mexico to spend several well reviewed in the press, with comments like,“For months in California recuperating from illness. sheer, sincere modernism, however, the prize at the exhibit is carried off by Marsden Hartley, whose vigorous, sweep- SUMMER 1919 Begins a more schematic and less natural- ing strokes— devoted to the depicting of abstract ideas— istic series of pastels of the New Mexico landscape. Starts have almost terrifying power, though sometimes remind- to experiment with oil paintings based on the pastels. ing one rather more of a bad dream than a picture.”

NOVEMBER 19, 1919 Leaves New Mexico for New York 1926–29 Hartley produces a number of paintings and City. In New York between 1919 and 1921, Hartley drawings closely patterned after the work of Paul paints bright, vigorous oils of New Mexico. Cézanne while living in southern France. JANUARY 1920 Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe 1931 Hartley receives a Guggenheim Fellowship and visit Hartley and view his recent New Mexico paintings. uses the money to go to Mexico in 1932, where he OCTOBER 1920 Joins the Société Anonyme, a Dadaist produces mystical paintings of mountains. organization for the advancement of modern art in EARLY 1930s Paints landscapes in both Europe and the America, founded by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and United States. Katherine Dreier. Begins to write essays and poems influenced by Dada. JANUARY 1935 Hartley is forced to destroy one hun- dred paintings and drawings because he can not afford NOVEMBER 1920 Hartley paints a final, highly symmet- to pay for their storage. rical set of New Mexico pictures in New York. SEPTEMBER 1935 Hartley travels to Nova Scotia, where 1920–21 Hartley’s book of essays, called Adventures he boards with the Masons, a family of fishermen to in the Arts, is assembled under the eye of Stieglitz and whom Hartley becomes very attached.When, in Septem- others during Hartley’s final year in New York. ber of 1936, the two Mason sons and their cousin are

MAY 17, 1921 Frustrated by financial difficulties and drowned while boating in a storm, Hartley is devastated discouraged with the idea of discovering the American and produces many canvases over the next several years modernism he had sought in New Mexico, Hartley sells in which he pictures the family or alludes to them. off all his artwork in an auction so he can afford to LATE 1930s Hartley turns increasingly to painting the leave for Europe. Maine landscape. In October 1939, he is finally able to NOVEMBER 1921 After spending a few months in Paris, go to Mount Katahdin, Maine, a place he had long Hartley arrives in Berlin. He becomes seriously ill with wanted to visit. For the rest of his life, Hartley paints the syphilis that winter and spends the next year recovering. mountain from the sketches he makes on that trip. Also during this period, Hartley produces a number of figural SPRING 1923 As he finally recovers from his illness, works, often of men, which show a complex representa- Hartley begins his complex New Mexico Recollections tion of masculinity and homoeroticism. series. These tumultuous paintings depict a landscape of memory and fantasy rather than the kind of concrete SEPTEMBER 2, 1943 Hartley dies of heart failure in landscape depicted in the early New Mexico pastels. Ellsworth, Maine.

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