BACK TO MODERNISM

MARSDEN HARTLEY
(American, 1878-1943)

Maritime Alps, Vence, No. 9, 1925-26
Oil on canvas
Museum purchase 1960.3

From 1925 to 1929 American painter Marsden Hartley lived and painted in the south of France, settling first in the hilltop town of Vence, located five miles from the Mediterranean Sea. There Hartley leased a small stucco house and began a series of paintings depicting the ravine where the Loup River flows under a railway viaduct.

The Vence scenery inspired Hartley to explore geometric forms in nature, an approach that he recognized as a basic element in the work of Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne. Hartley built up the surfaces of the mountain with wedge-like facets of paint, similar to the paint application used by Cézanne in his late landscapes. Although he employed a more vibrant palette than Cézanne, Hartley achieved a similar sense of solidity and structure.