Painting of a mountain ridge in navy and pink surrounded by a landscape of warm pinks, reds, and green.
Painting of a mountain ridge in navy and pink surrounded by a landscape of warm pinks, reds, and green.

About the Object

A view of Mont Sainte-Victoire, a mountain ridge in the south of France, where Marsden Hartley lived in the late 1920s. The view and brushwork are clear homages to Paul Cézanne, but the vibrant palette, with its hot pinks and brilliant blues, is all Hartley. In this painting, the mountain consumes the canvas, there are no roads or trees, the intervening distance has been compressed. Bands of color suggest varying terrain and the play of light across the mountain. A pinkish cloud extends across the top of the canvas, like an arm reaching to envelope the peak.

 

Additional Information

Hartley created at least four other paintings of this view: Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1927, Des Moines Art Center; Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1927, Collection of Elaine and Henry Kaufman; and at least two in private collections. In each work he explored slightly different foregrounds, sometimes including trees or a road, and experimented with the shading on the mountain and the treatment of the sky.

The Artist;
[Carroll-Knight Gallery, Inc., Saint Louis, MO];
Private Collection, Saint Louis, MO;
By descent to a Private Collection, New York;
[Martha Parrish and James Reinish, Inc.];
Private Collection, Massachusetts, c. 1996;
Private Collection, New York, 1998;
[Gerald Peters Gallery, New York, NY];

St. Louis. The Carroll-Knight Gallery. Paintings by American, French and English Artists. Opened April 9 1947, cat. no. 19.

New York. Salander-O’Reilly Gallery. Marsden Hartley: Paintings and Drawings. January 8-February 27, 1988, cat. no. 17, ill. pl. 15.

Montclair, NJ. Montclair Art Museum. Cézanne and American Modernism. (September 13, 2009-January 3, 2010); Baltimore, MD. The Baltimore Museum of Art (February 14-May 23, 2010); Phoenix, AZ. Phoenix Art Museum (July 3-September 26, 2010); pp. 48, 216, 224, 342, ill. p. 224, cat. no. 55.

Tulsa. Philbrook Museum of Art.  From New York to New Mexico: Masterworks of American Modernism from the Vilcek Foundation Collection (February 8-May 3, 2015); Phoenix. Phoenix Art Museum (June 5-September 6, 2015); Santa Fe. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (September 25, 2015-January 10, 2016).

New York. The Met Breuer. Marsden Hartley’s Maine (March 15-June 18, 2017); Waterville, ME. Colby College Museum of Art (July 8-November 12, 2017).

Elizabeth McCausland Papers, Marsden Hartley Catalogue Raisonné: Oils [circa 1944-1964]. Box 14, Folder 47, Frames 3-14. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Elizabeth McCausland Papers, Other Research Files: Notes on Dating and Style, 1950-1953, undated. Box 18, Folder 36, Frame 4. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Dobrzynski, Judith H. Having Triumphed in Philadelphia, Cézanne Moves to Montclair, Real Clear Arts, an Arts Journal weblog, July 16, 2009, ill.

Dobrzynski, Judith H. “His Transatlantic Progeny,” Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2009, D7.

Stavitsky, Gail. “Cézanne and American Modernism,” The Magazine Antiques, 176, no. 5 (November 2009) pp. 115-116, ill. p. 116.

Art Daily 2009. Milchman, Kari. Blurring the Lines, City Arts Blog, December 3, 2009.

Giuliano, Mike. “Visual Arts: C’est Cézanne!” Howard County Times, February 25, 2010.

McCabe, Bret. “Lasting Impressions: Cézanne’s Influence is seen reflected, and refracted in his American Followers,” Baltimore City Paper, May 12, 2010.

Green, Tyler. “‘Cézanne and American Modernism’ in Baltimore,” Modern Art Notes, March 15, 2010.

DeLue, Rachael Z. “Cézanne and American Modernism,” CAA Reviews, July 21, 2010, ill.

Agee, William C. and Lewis Kachur. Masterpieces of American Modernism: From the Vilcek Collection. London: Merrell, 2013, pp. 27-28, 72-73, 266, ill. p. 73.

Pochoda, Elizabeth. “Freedom and the abstract truth: Jan and Marica Vilcek’s collection of American modernist art,” The Magazine Antiques (May/June 2013), ill. pp. 97, 99.

O’Hern, John. “Modern Manor,” American Fine Art Magazine, September/October 2013, ill. pp. 56, 58.

Abatemarco, Michael. “Assimilation Through Art: The Modernist Collection of Marica and Jan Vilcek,” Pasatiempo, September 25, 2015, ill. p. 1.

 

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