ing a Mandarin whose enigmatic profile foreground stand six masqueraders and there 75 Years Ago: faces that of Hartley. is Hartley, to the left of a pair of penguins. Throughout his life, Hartley seemed to He is again dressed in exotic garb, "the East have enjoyed having his picture taken. In · Indian'' costume for which he won a prize Marsden Hartley many of them he poses for the camera, his as "Most Artistic;' as an article in the Pro- large, curiously pale eyes with their dark vincetown Advocate (August 24, 1916) tells us. pupils staring out of deep hollows over his This costume is not as extravagant as the in Provincetown aquiline beak of a nose. So much a Paris version (which, one suspects, may have wanderer, perhaps Hartley felt his presence been rented) but he has stained his face and in strange places substantiated by a hands as he had done before. His stance, too, photographic image. is like that of the QuatresArts Ball photo, After a major show of his work in Berlin right arm akimbo, right leg forward. He in 1915, Hartley came back to the United stares out, his eyes catching the flash of the States to what he later characterized as " the camera's exposure. His is easily the most Great Provincetown Summer:'' Province- compelling figure in the crowded room- town was described at the time in a Boston the Ball was a sold-out success, according Globe article as the "Biggest Art Colony in to the Advocate. the World" (August 27, 1916). This was Hartley's sense of self and his innate largely due to the war; many artists who, dandyism come across in these photographs by Tony Vevers like Hartley, had had to leave Europe, and as they do in so many others. When one

"Provincetown is full. Provincetown is of course many who would have gone, all thinks of the often wretched circumstances intoxicated, full of people, intoxicated found a viable substitute in Provincetown. of his life: constantly in need of money, with pleasure." In addition there was an influx of writers, driven to a nomadic existence, and without Provincetown Advocate, August 24, 1916 notably Eugene O'Neill, Max Eastman, and the recognition that he felt he deserved (on John Reed who invited Hartley for the many occasions he contemplated suicide), n Paris, on the first of June, 1912, summer. one can only be glad for these recorded Marsden Hartley was photographed in During his stay in Provincetown, Hartley moments when Marsden Hartley appeared I the exotic Arabian garb he had worn produced a series of paintings w hich are as a prince, an exotic and noble being, who to the Ouatres Arts Ball the night unique in his oeuvre. Seemingly based on would indeed, as he sometimes proclaimed, before. The notation over his signature gives nature and on things observed-the sails and live forever in the history of American art. the time: 7 a.m. He was 35 years old, on hulls of boats and the cool tones of sea and his first visit to Europe. His costume is sky-these works present a sharp contrast I am indebted to Barbara Haskell's Marsden resplendent with jewels and embroidery- to the intensity and color of his "War Hartley, The Whitney Museum of American Art, even his turban-and he wears beads and Motif" paintings of the year before. with New York University Press, New York and bangles around his neck and on his arms (to The major social event of that summer London, 1980, a most knowledgeable and thought- the end of his life he loved and collected was the costume ball sponsored by the Prov- ful account of Hartley's life and work. beautiful objects). He poses like a silent incetown Art Association. A sepiatone print Tony Vevers movie sheikh with a proud and confident in the archives of the Art Association shows air of mastery-all the more striking since the celebrants in the Town Hall, where the Left: photo courtesy of the Provincetown Art Associa- he had arrived only three weeks earlier. dance was held (the Art Association was not tion & Museum; right: Marsden Hartley in Florence, from Behind him is an oriental hanging show- to have its own building until 1921). In the a postcard in the possession of the author.

Provincetown Arts 1991 111 Reflections on Painting in Marsden Hartley's Poem "Lewiston Is a Pleasant Place"

In the summer of I admire my native city 1937, the painter because I Marsden Hartley, it is part of the secret sacred who was also a poet rite and an essayist absorbed of love of place. with Emerson and Whit- My childhood which was man as well as the mystical hard, it is always writings of Jacob Boehme hard to be alone at the and Meister Eckhart, wrong time . .. returned to paint in Maine, where he was born 60 The central drama of years earlier. He had six Hartley's childhood must more years to live. There, have been the death of his moving about and work- mother, which occurred ing in different locales, when he was only eight. gathering memories of his Death was to become a Eight Bells Folly: Memorial to Hart Crane Marsden Hartley, 199 3 childhood, he found the University of Minnesota Art Museum Gift of lone and Hudson Walker major theme in his paint- self he composed in a ings. Indeed, those persons poem, "Lewiston Is a Plea- he loved were most power- y sant Place;' which ap- 8 G A L L E v N fully celebrated in paint on- peared three years before he for John B. Van Sickle, Horatiano Amico ly after they were lost died in a collection called through death, such as the Androscoggin, named after handsome young soldier the river that flows through the town. The only by adult life: Karl Von Freyburg, whom Hartley memorial- poem is full of revelations about his paintings. ized in his 1914 '~Portrait of a German Office~' In "Lewiston Is a Pleasant Place;' Hartley On the breast of David's Mountain or Hart Crane, whose portrait, "Eight Bells announces that he is returning "to instances many an adolescent dream was slain, FollY;'' was painted a year after Crane's death that are the basic images/ .of my life as it now later to be snatched from an early death in 1932, or Alty Mason, the young Nova is!' The dreams of his youth in Lewiston, nur- when manhood gave them back their breath Scotia fisherman whose portraits were painted tured by nature in the vicinity of David's again. in the late '30s after he was lost at sea. In Mountain, a hill that rises above Bates Col- "Lewiston Is a Pleasant PlaceJ' Hartley speaks lege, were interrupted by economic necessity. Mountains were one of Hartleys basic im- of death with pointed force as "drama number In 1892, at the age of 15, he was forced to ages. Whether these images were the moun- oneJ' although he displaces the death of his abandon school and work in a shoe factory tains of New Mexico or the Bavarian Alps, the mother with the earlier death of a white kit- in nearby Auburn. Only in 1896, after rejoin- rock formations of Dogtown in Gloucester, ten, which he calls the "image of all that was ing his family in Cleveland, Ohio, and work- Massachusetts, or the coves and islands off the to come after!' ing in a marble quarry, did Hartley begin to coast of Maine, each place is particular and However diminutive to the adult, this death, study art with a local painter. Subsequently, recognizable in his paintings. He depended on to a child, looms large, much as a remembered scholarships to art schools in Cleveland and place for inspiration, which is one reason he pasture in Lewiston "which for/ us children

New York brightened his future7 and by the felt the need for lifelong travel in search of sub- was the Asia and Africa off our first impres- age of 30 he began to exhibit his work. He jects. He opens his poem about Lewiston by sions!' Hartley relates his boyhood imagina- never forgot the pain of his youth, redeemed announcing his devotion to place: tion and awed sense of scale to the exoticism

Provincetown Arts 1992 97 of non-Western cultures, characters in paintings such which he investigated in as 11 Canuck Yankee Lum- the Trocadero Museum in berjack at Old Orchard Paris, the Museum for Beach, Maine" from Volkerkunde in Berlin, or 1940-41 or "Madawaska- in other collections of the -Acadian Light-Heavy" art of Asia and Africa. Ear- from 1940. Like the Cana- ly on he acquired some dians who settled in curios such as a much- Lewiston, bringing new loved Siamese Buddha- fervors, new charms, new "this silver laid in wax;' he vivacities, these ethnic told his niece years later in stereotypes contribute to a 1924, with the "most "richer sense of plain liv- heavenly smile!' These ing!' much-loved treasures ap- Hartley's poem is a kind pear in paintings such as of ars poetica about his own "Musical Theme (Oriental Labrador Ducks Marsden Hartley, 19 36 practice as a poet and as a Private Collection Courtesy Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown Symphony)" of 1912-13 or painter. His language, like in his abstractions inspired Horace's Satires, has an in- by African textiles of the early 1920s. cut wood suffers a kind of death, too, as it formal, conversational immediacy, with Throughout his life Hartley undertook ardu- undergoes transformation into paper or syn- dramatized anecdotes and occasional editorial ous hikes to commune with nature and to thetic stockings: irony A long passage praises a Lewiston poet, paint his impressions. In "Lewiston" he recalls Wallace Gould, whose work Hartley pro- the central role that nature played in his adult I myself having seen the moment when wood moted to William Carlos Williams and Har- life: 11and myself walking with my father becomes syrup riet Monroe, among other poets and editors. along the/ edges of a cool clear stream, gather- then silk. Some of his own aims and values may be ing water cresses,! trilliums, dogtooth violets!' revealed by the terms of his praise for Gould He wanted to erase any distance which In the poem he also recalls attending church as a poet of "Greek outline, Horatian/ simplici- separated him from nature and what nature services with "Miss Jane at the organ, pumped ty, with pagan notions of the/ livingness of revealed. When he was happily painting in the by a boy at the/back, out of sight!' Watching the moment" Bavarian Alps in 1933 he wrote to his friend over him while he sang magnificats and Adelaide Kuntz exclaiming: 11I am seeing epiphanies was the Ascension of Christ 11in Gail Levin , Professor of Art History at Baruch nature all over again-and what I am doing not too good stained glass;' a phrase that an- College and the Graduate School of the City here now is the work of the rest of my life!' ticipates his powerful late work with its unor- University of New York, is working on a In 11Lewiston" Hartley recalls the log drives thodox Christian imagery,11Christ Held by catalogue raisonne of Marsden Hartley. of the lumber industry and the jackstraw pat- Half-Naked Merr' from 1940-41 and 11Prayer terns of the logs created in the flowing river. on Park Avenue" from 1942. The tall trees that figure in his early Maine The Maine folk described in the poem, Dr. paintings recur laterand lumbering itself seems Gasselon, spitting tobacco juice, and Skinny the theme of other late works such as 11West Jinny, terrifying the children who believe she Brookville, Maine" or 11Log Jam, Penobscot • carries a butcher's knife under her black shawl, Bay" In the poem, Hartley observes that the may be the verbal equivalents of folk

Provincetown Arts 1992 98