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Marsden Hartley MARSDEN HARTLEY Exhibition of Recent Paintings, 1936 April 20-May 17,1937 AN AMERICAN PLACE 509 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK WEEKDAYS I O A. M. - 6 P. M. SUNDAYS 3 - 6 P. M. Signing family papers On the Subject of Nativeness Out of the maelstrom emerging —a Tribute to Maine laughter of the mis-spun dream uncoiling from the topmost bough, even to the last The subject matter of the pictures in this present exhibition twig, last leaf, the beating of wings that have is derived from my own native country—New England—and left for other leaves and other the country beyond to the north, geologically much the same dream uncoilings thing, with, if possible, an added tang because it is if anything white wonder of a single complete thought wilder still, and the people that inhabit it, fine types of hard wrapped about the theme as chrysalid boned sturdy beings, have the direct simplicity of these unique with face of pre-dynastic scarab and original places, this country being of course, Nova Scotia. grimacing to the flaws of nature These people, the kind one expects to encounter in the forests tossed from casual aeon to casual aeon— where the moose and caribou range, and who, sauntering to­ and we, the several shapes of self ward the nearer south in search of food which deep snows deny standing in a frozen shadow, asking them, are on perilous ground, doomed to decrease in numbers. of a certain mendicant the un­ As a boy in Maine, one read the news items in the paper after suspected way home—this way—turn October, and the casual daily report was—So-and-So lost in left, then right, go over certain hill, the woods, perished of hunger and cold, and often never found there will be a fire burning— until the thaws of spring, and it is exactly the same today. above, the charred wood tendrilled smoke The opulent rigidity of this north country, which is a kind of giving itself the privilege of time-communion, cousin to Labrador and the further ice-fields, produces a simple, unaffected conduct and with it a kind of stark poetry exudes gaining thereby its softly spoken immortality from their behaviours, that hardiness of gaze and frank earn­ amid the whirr of broken thunder wheels, estness of approach which is typical of all northerners which the strange, familiar destiny evolving, is sometimes as refreshing to the eye as cool spring water is to we at home at last, the un-conditioned flower the throat, because there is the quality of direct companionship blooming in a streak of sun, the several shapes in it, and—if you are seen, you are seen "through," there is no of self in one— mystery you can offer, quite like the encounter with the indians and here, the costly geometric in the southwest, for whom silent contact is the sure means of a signature, signed and sealed— declaration of friendship, and since you cannot deceive them, heraldic images to be they make no attempt to deceive you, so that, generally speak­ genuflective offerings to place. ing, how do you do is much the same thing as how do you do my MARSDEN HARTLEY friend, which is exactly the indian method. Those great sea faces up there in the north are wonderful with A fierce Yankee was Homer, keeping a shotgun behind his door directness and trust, and since silence is the bond, silence is the for years against the local invader of his property, so the story enriching channel by which you make social contact, or at least goes, who must at that time have harrassed him. to say, brief speech and much meat in it. In the field of music, Maine has come to the front with such Husbands and sons are drowned at sea, and this is just as natural names as Emma Eames of Bath, Lillian (Norton) Nordica of to hear as if they died of the measles or of a fever, and these Skowhegan, Annie Louise Cary of Durham, as in the field of men who are pretty much as children always, go to their death literature there are the names of Edwin Arlington Robinson without murmur and without reproach. of Gardiner, Edna St. Vincent Millay of Rockland, Wallace Maine is likewise a strong, simple, stately and perhaps brutal Gould and Holman Day of Lewiston, and as a native Maine country, you get directness of demeanor, and you know where artist, myself from Lewiston, and we are not forgetting Long­ you stand, for lying is a detestation, as it is not in the cities. fellow. To the outsider New England is New England, no matter what There is a new school of literature of Maine coming to the route he takes, he takes out his gasoline road map, and it is front such as the names of Rachel Field, Mary Ellen Chase, much the same thing to him, because he thinks of routes and Gerald Warner Brace, William Haynes, Frederick Nebel, of how much ground he can cover, but tell this to the secular I. H. Carter, E. Myers, B. A. Williams, and Robert Tristram New Englander and you get into trouble, and for a Vermonter Coffin, whose latest volume of local flavour verse surprises one —New England is never anything but Vermont, New Hamp­ with the vivid localism of its characterization, proving that shire—being pretty much sold out to the rich invader has when localism is true, it is bound to survive and recreate itself. without doubt its sense of pure locality when the said invader "The Country of the Pointed Firs" and the other attractive has left. stories of Maine of Sara Orne Jewett did much to produce the To the Maine-"iac" New England is never anything but local sense of literature, and the tradition has been carried on Maine, he never says he comes from New England, he comes by the now well known others, Robert Frost added his sharp from Maine, and Maine is his country and his place of origins, values to the west in New Hampshire. bounded on every side by its people, its place, and its ideas, just If you will probably find never a mention of Maine in the stark as a Boston one would never dream of saying he is from Massa­ poetry of Edward Arlington Robinson, no one could be more chusetts, and how could he? representative in his type of speech, no one more typical of the This quality of abstract yet definite reality appears in the realm bitter behaviours of place, but we must correct the New Ifork of art in its strongest and most powerful degree in the paintings art critic who says, "why do Vermont and Maine always weep" of Albert Ryder, who has said once and for all—all that will by remarking that they never weep, they grit their teeth and ever be known about that country, and it is given further local face the gale. significance in the work of George Fuller and of Winslow It is the habit of middle westerner regional rooters to speak of Homer, who though having been born in Boston, spent the New England as the fag end of Europe, but that is because, most expressive part of his life at Prout's Neck, Maine. knowing little or nothing about it, they dispatch it at once with 3 a derogation of Harvard, which of course is not a place but ground of my art endeavors, are as much my native land as if I a school. had been born in them, for they are of the same stout substance The essential nativeness of Maine remains as it was, and the and texture, and bear the same steely integrity. best Maine-iacs are devout with purposes of defense. Those pictures which are not scenes, are in their way portraits of objects which relieves them from being still-lives, objects The Androscoggin, the Kennebec, and the Penobscot flow thrown up with the tides on the shores of the island where I down to the sea as solemnly as ever, and the numberless inland have been living of late, the marine vistas to express the seas lakes harbour the loon, and give rest to the angles of geese of the north, the objects at my feet everywhere which the tides making south or north according to season, and the black bears washed up representing the visible life of place, such as frag­ roam over the mountain tops as usual. ments of rope thrown overboard out on the Grand Banks by the If the Zeppelin rides the sky at night, and aeroplanes set flocks fishermen, or shells and other crustaces driven in from their of sea gulls flying, the gulls remain the same and the rocks, moorings among the matted seaweed and the rocks, given up pines, and thrashing seas never lose their power and their even as the lost at sea are sometimes given up. native tang. This quality of nativeness is coloured by heritage, birth, and Nativeness is built of such primitive things, and whatever is environment, and it is therefore for this reason that I wish to one's nativeness, one holds and never loses no matter how far declare myself the painter from Maine. afield the traveling may be. We are subjects of our nativeness, and are at all times happily Henry Adams' Boston is in every line of the "Education" and subject to it, only the mollusc, the chameleon, or the sponge the great Jameses never shook the soil of their native heath being able to affect dissolution of this aspect.
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