About the Object
A seated male figure occupies the left side of the canvas and a collection of bodybuilding equipment fills the right side. This work relates to Hartley’s lifelong passion for the circus and is one of several works in his oeuvre that take performers as their subject.
Additional Information
This painting is also related to a series of some 16 nude drawings—12 male and four female nudes—done in Berlin. The Strong Man is the only painted nude in the series. The drawings include Female Nude, 1922–23, in the Whitney Museum of American Art and Seated Male Nude, 1923, a pastel, in the Detroit Institute of Art.
The Artist;
Adelaide Kuntz, Bronxville, NY, from the Artist;
[Sotheby’s, New York, NY, April 17, 1975, lot 120];
Daniel A. Don, Chicago, IL;
Private Collection, by bequest from above, c. 1980-2003;
[Christie’s, New York, NY, December 4, 2003, lot 111];
Private Collection, Texas, purchased at above sale, 2003;
[Owings-Dewey Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM];
Lewiston, ME. Bates College Museum of Art. Marsden Hartley: Adventurer in the Arts. September 20-November 19, 2021, pp. 7, 34, 111, ill. pp. 110-111.
Cambridge, England. The Fitzwilliam Museum. Paris 1924: Sport, Art and the Body. July 19-November 3, 2024.
Santa Fe, NM. New Mexico Museum of Art. Marsden Hartley: Adventurer in the Arts. April 5-July 25, 2025.
Elizabeth McCausland Papers, Marsden Hartley Catalogue Raisonné: Oils, circa [1944-1964]. Box 14, Folder 25, ill. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Mrs. Charles P. Kuntz Collection. Sotheby’s, New York. American 18th, 19th & 20th Century Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors & Sculpture. April 17, 1975, lot 120, ill.
Harnsberger, R. Scott. Four Artists of the Stieglitz Circle: A Sourcebook on Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin and Max Weber. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002, p. 137.
Private Collection. Christie’s, New York. Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture. December 4 2003, p. 161, lot 111, ill. p. 161.
Hole, Heather. “’America as Landscape’: Marsden Hartley and New Mexico, 1918-1924,” PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 2005, pp. 224-226.
Agee, William C. and Lewis Kachur. Masterpieces of American Modernism: From the Vilcek Collection. London: Merrell, 2013, pp. 27, 70-71, 266, ill. pp. 70-71.
O’Hern, John. “Modern Manor,” American Fine Art Magazine, September/October 2013, ill. p. 61.
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