The Marsden Hartley Legacy Project: The Complete Paintings and Works on Paper announces the highly anticipated launch of its website in association with Bates College Museum of Art.
The catalogue consists of over 1600 paintings, drawings, pastels, and prints executed by Marsden Hartley (1877–1943). In addition to photography and full attributions for each work, the catalogue compiles detailed provenances, exhibition histories, and bibliographies. Documenting over 2200 exhibitions and 2100 publications related to Hartley, the project aims to ignite and sustain scholarship on one of America’s most important modernists. The website will be updated continually as new material comes to light.
Left: Marsden Hartley, Granite by the Sea, Seguin Light, Off Indian Point Georgetown, Maine (1937–38; repainted 1940), oil on board, 20 x 28 inches (photo Jim Frank, collection Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York; gift of Roy. R. Neuberger); Right: Marsden Hartley, “New Mexico Recollection, Storm” (c. 1923), oil on canvas, 29 x 41 1/4 inches. Private collection.
In 2019, independent art historian Gail R. Scott partnered with Bates College Museum of Art to inaugurate the project. In addition to serving as curator and contributor to numerous Hartley exhibitions, Scott authored a monograph on the artist (Abbeville Press, 1988) as well as edited a volume of his essays (On Art by Marsden Hartley, Horizon Press, 1982) and his poetry (The Collected Poems of Marsden Hartley, Black Sparrow Press, 1987). “Gail is the leading authority on all things Hartley,” says Carrie Cushman, director of Bates College Museum of Art, “and we are fortunate that she recognized Bates, located in Hartley’s hometown of Lewiston, Maine, as a worthy institution to host the Legacy Project.”
“In the last three years of his life, Marsden Hartley schemed and dreamed about public recognition — for both his visual and his literary work,” says Scott. “He wanted the paintings to be where they would be seen, the poetry and books to be in libraries and to be read. The Marsden Hartley Legacy Project is a 21st-century blossoming of that ambition, but also a rich trove to be mined.”
Left: Marsden Hartley, “Harbor Scene Viewed Through Fish Nets” (1934 or 1936), black ink with brown ink underdrawing on paper, 6 7/8 x 9 7/8 inches (courtesy Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine, Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection; gift of Norma Berger); Right: Marsden Hartley, “Blueberry Highway—Dogtown” (1931); oil on board, mounted on wood panel, 18 1/4 x 24 inches (courtesy the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; purchase with bequest of C. Donald Belcher)
With an intuitive layout and easy-to-use filters, the Marsden Hartley Legacy Project is designed to serve a broad audience. Additional materials include a biography, an extended chronology, a list of the artist’s personal library, commentaries on individual and groups of works, and substantive guest essays by renowned art historians, positioning the Project as the central resource to study, explore, and appreciate the art of Marsden Hartley.
Made possible with generous funding from the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, the Vilcek Foundation, the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, and numerous private donors, the organizers of the Marsden Hartley Legacy Project are proud to make this important body of research freely available to the public.
To learn more, visit marsdenhartleylegacy.org.
