Home > Art > Mont Sainte-Victoire
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.

 

Related Objects

Colored Drawing, Canvas

1929 Arthur Dove
Abstract painting with forms suggestive of seascape.

Tree and Urn

1921 Stuart Davis
A small urn set next to a large tree in a cubist landscape, areas of brown dots suggest leaves.

Schiff

1915 Marsden Hartley
A ship, blue and white waves with four emerging stylized plants, and a yellow sun with symmetrical white wings hovering above.

Black Place II

1945 Georgia O'Keeffe
Large mounds of green-black and pink mountains form a valley at the center of the painting.

Sunrise III (Set of Three)

December 1, 1941 Arthur Dove
A horizontal black stripe intersects the bottom of two large blue-black rings with a yellow sun in the center.

Lake George – Autumn

1922 Georgia O'Keeffe
A layered landscape with purple mountains, a blue lake, and round trees with gradients of autumn colors.

In the Patio IX

1950 Georgia O'Keeffe
Painted grey and black v-shape structure with a blue sky overhead.

Sword Plant (From the Shore)

1921 Stuart Davis
A landscape featuring three bare trees and a sword plant painted in muted greens, browns and grays with short brush strokes.

New Mexico Recollection

1923 Marsden Hartley
Landscape of a flat plain with hills along the horizon, small green shrubs punctuate the landscape and dark clouds fill the sky.

Silence of High Noon – Midsummer

c. 1907-08 Marsden Hartley
A landscape of a vacant hill using prominent shades of blue, brush markings are impressionistic and create texture within the painting.

You may also be interested in

September 15 - November 10, 2012

O Zhang: I Am Your Mirror

Armed with a map and her camera, Chinese-born artist O Zhang set off across the country to photograph blank billboards strewn across the American landscape.
2020 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise

Martin Jonikas

Martin Jonikas receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for molecular studies on Chlamydomonas, a model photosynthetic organism, with long-term implications for improving food-crop yield and combating climate change.
Portrait of Martin Jonikas
2013 Vilcek Prize

Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma receives the Vilcek Prize for Contemporary Music for his superb artistry as a master cellist and his daring versatility that spans genres as diverse as tango, bluegrass, and the folk music of China, Japan, and Central Asia.
Yo-Yo Ma